Toy Guns: Do They Harm Our Kids?

Posted by: Anne Newman on February 13

I confess. At age 5, I was a pistol packin’ gal, dressed in my Annie Oakley costume with toy guns blazin’ as I chased my brother outside our Spokane (Wash.) home. It was the Fifties, and my Saturday mornings were filled with TV shows that celebrated the American West: Wyatt Earp, Sky King, Fury, Annie Oakley, The Roy Rogers Show, and on Saturday nights, Gunsmoke. Gun-twirling Annie Oakley TV star Gail Davis even came to the rodeo in town. For a girl looking for heroines, the Annie Oaklies and Dale Evanses of the world sure beat saloon owners like Miss Kitty.

Now comes news that Mexico is considering legislation to ban toy guns in an effort to reduce aggression in a country awash in violence. And in New York, faced with another innocent teen victim of inner city violence, the state’s newest U.S. senator, Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, is talking about her support for the Second Amendment by emphasizing her opposition to gun trafficking. Perhaps because of that urban violence not too far away, I found as a first-time mother in a hip Brooklyn neighborhood 15 years ago that toy weapons were considered forbidden for my daughter, too threatening to parents uncertain of the long-term influence that pretend shootouts would have on their kids.

Confession No. 2: My 10-year-old son has an arsenal of toy pistols, rifles, light sabers, nerf guns, and swords. Now in the New Jersey suburbs, I gave up the battle against toy weapons long ago—probably about the time that he was making guns out of Duplos and sticks at age 3 and playing with toy weapons at his friends’ houses. He’s not a video game addict, and spends very little of his time engaged in electronic violence. He’s a builder (Legos) with a great imagination. He has two drawers of dress-up clothes and old Halloween costumes beneath his bunk bed, costumes that are constantly in use as he and his friends (boys and girls) get into character for their imaginary movies, race around the yard, and climb in and out of the treehouse (or rappel off its porch)—weapons drawn. When my three younger nephews arrive, we sometimes feel like we’re caught in an epic battle between Jedi warriors and the evil forces of the Empire (or, as two as my nephews recently enacted, complete with song, the fight scene from West Side Story).

So, is gun play bad for boys? Not according to Jay Mechling, professor of American Studies at the University of California, Davis. “Because boys have a biological push toward aggression,” Mechling wrote in the October 2008 issue of the American Journal of Play, their use of toy guns becomes “a playful performance of aggressive masculinity that takes the place of real aggression and violence.” Mechling even argues that boys who don’t have access to fantasy play with toy guns and other symbols of power “are working under a deficit,” missing out on a common way in which boys learn the difference between real aggression and stylized aggression, real violence and fantasy violence. The best thing adults can do? “Leave the kids alone,” he says.

Confession No. 3: After all that gun totin’ I did as a young girl, real guns still scare me—even more so since I saw too much bloody evidence of their power as a crime reporter years ago. I have no need to keep one in my house to protect my family nor have I ever wanted to learn how to hunt. But did I enjoy all those gun battles as a fantasy Annie Oakley? Darn shootin’ I did.

So reader, am I bad parent by letting my son play with toy weapons?

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