New York's latest crime-buster: muzzling toy guns

Christian Science Monitor ^ | Thursday, January 2, 2003 | By Ashley Chapman| Special to The Christian Science Monitor

[JohnHuang2]

Thursday, January 2, 2003

Quote of the Day by thinktwice

[Djarum]

"But the bill is about how [a toy gun] makes people feel. If I feel threatened, I'm threatened."

At least he admits this isn't about logic, reality, good sense, or responsible legislating.

[Chemist_Geek]

The bill in City Council, on the other hand, would ban anything that can "reasonably be perceived to be an actual firearm," which would mean a total ban on imitation firearms - regardless of color or markings.

They're also going to have to ban jackets with pockets, then. Point one's index finger within the pocket...

[A6M3]

Reply to post #1: As ex-communist David Horowitz has always said, "when dealing with the left the issue is never the issue, the issue is always the marxist revolution". In the issue of toy guns this is also the case. The goal of the left is to replace the United States Government with a soviet style state. The largest stumbling block they face is an armed populace which has to be removed if the marxist conquest of the U.S. is to succeed. This means that the gun culture has to be destroyed and so the left is conducting a nationwide campaign to remove and demonize toy guns amongst our young so when they grow up they won't have an interest in firearms and passing anti-gun legislation and removing the 2nd amendment from our constitution will be in the bag. What this means is,is that we as Americans must counter the left's diabolical tactic by developing an interest in firearms in our children at a very early age. If we don't, our nation will without a doubt, become an American soviet state.

[Oztrich Boy]

"We recognize that you can't pull all guns off the streets: If people have a criminal mind, they'll make a gun out of a stick," says Bill Wren, deputy chief of staff for Brooklyn Councilman Al Vann

I can't believe that nearly every kid I went to primary school with had a criminal mind.

[Rome2000]

He says that one time when disciplined, his son "pointed his water gun at me."

I'm surprised this wussy didn't lock the kid up for a couple of years.

[The Duke]

"Like toy cigarettes, they're promoting something violent,"

Huh???

[goldstategop]

What? Playing cops & robbers? Toy guns have been around for decades and kids grew up normal. The anti-gun hysteria has reached bizarre heights. The notion kids are going to turn into natural born killers playing with toy guns isn't supported by one shred of evidence. But the gun banners objective isn't stigmazing guns; its breeding the idea some violence is inherently a moral good out of the children for their protection. And if our children don't know the difference between good and bad violence, they'll be prey to criminals. The gun banners don't care if kids are murdered when they've grown up; what they do care about is to make America a gun-free zone beginning with children's after-school activities.

[metesky]

And in New York, the site of many toy-gun fatalities, City Council members have introduced a bill to ban the sale of all toy guns - a ban that has not yet passed anywhere in the US.

Those toy guns are always killing people. I'll bet they're in cahoots with the evil SUVs.

[xm177e2]

The Constitution doesn't explicitly protect our right to own toy guns the way it protects real ones... although that would probably be considered a natural right, and therefore protected.

[Movemout]

I think "toy cigarettes" may be a reference to the candy cigarettes that were widely available 40 years ago.

This approach of restricting kids' access to toy guns is typical liberal think on the road to controlling adults' access to real guns. They are long term strategists. They know that old geezers like me aren't going to voluntarily surrender their firearms so they are working the next generation by brainwashing them and making them scared and uneducated about firearms. It has worked in other areas.

Actually it is nonsense because one can order some quite accurate and detailed replicas from various magazines of any long gun or side arm that has ever caught anyone's fancy. Just more tripe being shoveled on the peons.

[Vic3O3]

Idiocy alert! Better rush out & get the Red Ryder now!

[TigersEye]

"Giving our kids toy guns and then telling them to stay away from the real thing sends a mixed message," says Farideh Kioumehr, ...

Why? Don't your kids have more than one working brain cell?

[PoorMuttly]

This is why children should be TAUGHT to shoot, and "given" real guns to "own," and use under REAL Adult supervision...as so many of us were. So they know what it is, and how they are expected to behave with them. Strange how the generation's children who were denied this parenting, are the ones who are punching holes in themselves, getting loaded, killing themselves, and eachother. Strange. Movies and music lyrics have changed too. Odd. There COULDN'T be a connection, or indication of something. That would be so inconvenient to admit that it MUST be wrong...because obviously, liberal values are "good" by definition. Right ?!

We were also taught that Police were our friends, and not to point toy guns at them. I remember walking down the main street of my suburban town with a friend, in the mid- '60s, wearing Boy Scout uniforms, and carrying a deactivated Nazi Teller Mine, and a 105mm Panzer Shreck bazooka over my shoulder, which we had just bought from a collector...and the uniformed policeman across the street, doing crossing-guard duty at the Junior High school, just laughed an rolled his eyes. That's when Democrats were normal, conservative people, and it was your civic duty to be polite, and law-abiding. Hmmmm. This couldn't be true. It's the opposite of our agenda, which we KNOW has got to be "correct."

[PoorMuttly]

BTW...this was in New York.

[GovernmentShrinker]

It's a reference to people (including some minors) being shot by police or their intended victims, when the latter saw a toy gun being pointed at them and thought it was real.

But the moral of the story, of course, should be that if you don't want your kids to get shot, then you better make sure they aren't roaming the streets with realistic looking toy weapons, and staging hold-ups (which are often real, not pretend). IMO kids who are doing this sort of thing are no great loss to society anyway, as they will almost certainly graduate to committing crimes with real guns in short order.

[Billthedrill]

Hey, what a great parody! But you incorrectly attributed it to the Christian Science Monitor when it's really from The Onion, right? Uh...it's a parody, right? It's just a joke? Please, please tell me this is just a joke...

[ladylib]

I guess a toy cigarette could be considered a violent weapon if you mashed it into a playmate's eye, but then again, so could a pencil.

We live in a country of wusses.

[metesky]

Oh, I know what they meant, but it's not what they said.

[Robert357]

Thanks for the post. Bang

First, the rangemaster at a local range went to British Columbia to shoot in a air gun turnament. At the boarder they saw his NRA badges and he told them he was going to a shooting turnament. The had him pull over for a vehicle search and they took his air pistol inside to examine. Had it looked anything like a "real handgun" he would not have been allowed to have it and might have had real problems. Luckily it was a competition model that is pretty strange looking.

Second, there was a City in the UK, where it is illegal to sell sharp object (knives, siscors, letter openers, culterly sets, etc) to anyone under 18. I kid you not, even sewing kits are illegal to sell to minors because of the stitch puller and small scissors.

Third, while such air pistols look very real and have cause people who use them to be shot by police (this happened last summer in Seattle). Still, how much should society go to protect stupid people from themselves.

Finally, a law like proposed is like too vauge to pass consitutional muster. Maybe we should suggest to them that they do the assault weapon thing where they define "evil looking characteristics" (i.e. it is a dark color or bright shiny, that it has a hole to simulate a barrel, that it has what looks like a trigger guard, it has a handgrip.... No wait, I could be holding either some kind of lable maker or maybe a video game remote control unit.