HuntingNet.com Forums - Ban Toy Guns??

HuntingNet.com Forums (https://www.huntingnet.com/forum/)

- Guns (https://www.huntingnet.com/forum/guns-10/)

- - Ban Toy Guns?? (https://www.huntingnet.com/forum/guns/23104-ban-toy-guns.html)

Quote from the New York Daily News
<BLOCKQUOTE id=quotequote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>The sale of realistic black or silvery toy guns have been illegal in New York since 1999. The (proposed) new legislation would add all real- looking plastic guns of any color, since youths often spray-paint or tape over brightly colored pistols to achieve the same authentic look<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>

I guess apart from attempting to remove authentic looking fake guns from the hands of would-be criminals, this legislation would also effectively take away toy guns and stop children from playing with them. Is this good? Or should kids be permitted to play with toy guns so as not to create a mystique about guns and to learn and appreciate the difference between a toy gun and a real one. I grew up playing with toy guns. I also learned early on that my father's hunting rifles and service revolver were not toys. No doubt a fake authentic looking gun in the hands of a criminal is not desirable so should they be banned altogether or is New York going overboard with this proposed legislation? And where does it go from here? What's next? gg.

"The older a man gets, the farther he had to walk to school as a boy"

RE: Ban Toy Guns??

I think they should ban toy car too! Carscause more deaths than guns. They need to quit selling bicyles, skateboard, roller blades too. There are a lot of kids that get hurt on those each year.

My three year old daughter can tell the difference between a toy and a real gun. Because I have taught her. I don't even let her point a toy gun at people.

Those crooks that use toy guns can use their finger in a coat pocket and still be charge for armed robbery. I think it is just one more step trying to get the real thing from us.

RE: Ban Toy Guns??

If you really care for kids, you should lobby your congressman to pass a law requiring all children to wear a helmet, shinguards, and bubblewrap everytime they leave the house. All of their toys should be made of a soft nerf material that is molded into non-threatening and non-aggressive shapes (none in the shape of a football either). Kids should be taught not to point their fingers either in case there is a cop out there who is not smart enough to determine if its a finger or a real gun in a high stress life or death situation.

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms... who's bringing the chips?

RE: Ban Toy Guns??

I'm all for them banning toy guns.
Kids don't learn how to handle a "toy gun" and then when it is time for the real thing they have bad habits to un-learn.

I nearly shot a teenager once when he pulled a toy gun on me, luckily I realized what it was before I pulled the trigger. Scared him so bad I bet he still hasn't touched a real gun.

RE: Ban Toy Guns??

It sounds like crap at the first words. And just another way to get at our guns. But, when I look back on it my father never let us boys have toy guns. We always had real ones and new how to use them. We were never given b.b. guns because my dad figured we would use them as toys "All fun tell someone gets their eye poked out". If you want your kids to use guns take them out and teach them the correct way to handle one & show them what a firearm is capable of doing. If more people would do this we would have a lot less bang, bang, o.k. get up it's your turn. Oh, crap it REAL not a game..<img src=icon_smile_sad.gif border=0 align=middle>

RE: Ban Toy Guns??

DG,
In your hypothetical, the thugs have assaulted the police officers. Assault is loosely defined as a volitional act committed with the intent to place another in reasonable apprehension of receiving an immediate harmful or offensive touching. The cops will probably shoot the thugs and they will be justified in doing so by the doctrine of self defense. YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO THREATEN THE LIVES OF POLICE OFFICERS. Or anyone else's life for that matter.
Let's not ban toys. It's not the proper way to handle the problem. If too many people are committing crimes with toy guns, we must place larger penalties on these crimes. Criminals can fashion fake weapons in many ways. If you really wanted to get legislatively crazy, you could tax the toy gun manufacturers and apply the revenues from the tax to the local law enforcement. This would help catch the thugs and put them where they belong.

Edited by - recoiljunky on 02/08/2003 08:46:33

RE: Ban Toy Guns??

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quotequote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>Two thugs walk into the local convenient store and get the attendant at gunpoint with an authentic looking "Toy Gun". In the meanwhile an alarm was sent to the police dept. and the cops are on their way. Already a serious crime has been committed being toy or not called armed robbery. On their way out the door the cruiser shows up and two armed policemen bail out with guns drawn and both see the replica "Toy Gun" in the hand of the thug. The thug makes a move with this toy gun pointing at the police to try to keep them in check as they escape. At this point the policemen have to make a decision and what do you think it is? What would you do if you were in the policeman’s shoes? <hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>

I believe the cop has every right to use deadly force in this instance. In this case the thug is using a toy gun to threaten or give the officer a perceived threat to his life. If a cop cannot make a judgement on whether the person in front of them is an 8 year old boy playing with a squirt gun, or 20 year old who is running out of a liquor store with a real looking toy gun after a 911 call, the officer should find a profession he is more suited for.

One more thing... if you are using this example to ban toy guns, wouldn't stand to reason that the argument is the same for banning real guns if the thugs were using real guns?

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>I can see your from the country or very young. You need to get out more and spend some time in the streets, you wouldn't last 10 minutes out there <hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote>

Yes, I did grow up in the country, but this does not make me a rube. An old chinese proverb says "if you look for trouble, you will find it" Why would I want to spend time in the 'streets'? I have no business in shady areas of a city so I do not go there. These areas are human cesspools where parents, or 'parent' more likely if you can call them that are not teaching their kids right from wrong or disciplining them. This type of behavior and ethic is so foreign to me and to the type of place I come from that these people might as well be from a different planet. The kneejerk reaction is always that if one of these people find themselves in trouble with the law by misusing an object, the object should be banned for everyone.

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms... who's bringing the chips?

RE: Ban Toy Guns??

In response to others posts about the police having to decipher whether a criminal is holding a toy gun or not, in such situations, this is irrelevant, there would be no decision. Police are trained to react to what's happening, if a criminal is dumb enough to point a piece of plastic at a law enforcement officer, he'll be shot, and I for one would accredit the officer for doing so. In that situation, the police just don't know, they don't know if it's a loaded gun, unloaded, real, or fake, or if the criminal would pull the trigger or not, or if the criminal is a good shot or not, there are too many variables for them to have to consider each one, they just know that there's a gun in the hand of someone not wearing a badge, and it's his job to relieve the situation as quickly and safely as possible.

As for taking them away from kids, I don't think that kids should have realistic enough looking guns to be able to trick the average joe into thinking it's real. If we make guns look too lifelike, it may in fact blur the lines between a real gun and a toy gun in the child's mind, "look little brother, daddy's gun looks just like mine." I played with "pony boys" throughout my childhood, which look real enough for me, but I always knew the difference between those and my old man's revolvers, because they looked different. Toy manufacturers need to remember that children don't need realistic looking guns, because their games are all fantasy, they can turn a back yard treehouse into "Ft. Geronimo" and fight of the indians (no offense was meant to Native Americans by this) or into Star Base 1 and fight off invading aliens or Ft. Knox and fight back the bank robbers, and most the time they can have the same amount of fun pretending that a couple sticks or even their own hands are pistols instead of having very detailed toys, sure it makes it a little more fun to have a trigger to pull, but you can put a trigger on almost anything.

What I think needs to be done, rather than take all toy guns from children, is continue to ban realistic looking toys, and do more training of those that are typically victimized by criminals with toy guns, even when I worked part time at a pizza hut in rural Kansas as a high school kid I was trained a bit how to recognize counterfiet currency and trained what to do in case of a robbery, as I'm sure New Yorkers/big city dwellers are even moreso, how hard could it be to go over typical robbery cenarios a bit more extensively. Gas station attendants are often trained to remember/notice certain identifying qualities about robbers, notice scars and significant facial features and the clothes they're wearing, hair color etc, so why would it be so much more difficult to teach them to look for seams or to attempt to look down the barrel, or to note the magazine or slide releases or note if the cylinder is loaded or even open ended or even moveable for that matter. As long as very realistic looking toys aren't available, I'd bet with certain training, even a single day's training and a test would be enough to let most people be able to identify most fakes at a distance of across the counter, let alone if it got up in their face. I'm certain that small business employees in such cities are trained more than I was in counterfeit currency identification, so how much more would it take to teach them to identify a couple things that are dead give aways on guns? If it's close enough for them not to tell, then they should treat it as such, but when a guy pulls a revolver that has a seam flange an eighth inch tall and a plug an inch down the barrel and no holes in the face of a cylinder that appears to be the same piece as the frame, I think I'd be a bit curious?

Screw the 10 ring, keep them in the zero!!!