Activist Jerry Rubin’s “Alliance for Survival” peace group is encouraging children and families to say “no” to guns with a “No Toy Guns Merit Award Project” in response to the Newton, Conn. shooting which left 20 children and six adults dead, the Santa Monica Mirror reported.
The group will offer a personalized, frameable certificate to children and families that send the alliance a letter explaining “Why I will not buy toy guns for my children” or for children, “Why I do not like to play with toy guns.”
“After the recent tragic gun violence killings of so many children, isn’t it crucial to focus on all aspects of stopping further gun violence, including how so many children are learning at an early age, through the toy guns they play with, that it’s okay just to pretend to kill their friends and fellow schoolmates,” Rubin told the Mirror.
Cuz, like ‘toy guns’ never existed more than 30-40 years ago …
October 1940
You’ll put your eye out!
leigh
I looked for the clip of Ralphie imagining himself protecting his family from bad guys with his Red Ryder; couldn’t find it, settled for the actual paper ad.
But as a kid of the era of the Mattel cap guns and super spy toys, we were never pretending to “shoot our friends.” The whole fantasy play was about being good guys/bad guys and protecting our family/friends/country.
this will save so many lives what a great way for jerry to channel his energy and activism
– Maybe it would all make some sense if you just replace the word “friends” with the words “insane paranoid fucking Progressives”.
– Do they also plan to have a parallel award certificate to send to the familys who get shot up by home invasion thugs for lack of any defense or protection.
– Because that would be awesomness.
Darleen,
I grew up with three brothers and a boatload of gun-slinging boy cousins. All of them had toy guns: hand-guns, long guns all cap guns and later BB guns. We did the same thing always protecting our families and our property. We’d take turns playing War and Cowboys and Indians.
Those were the days.
I wonder how much being Project Coordinator for the Alliance for Survival pays.
I need to find a racket like that. Problem is its hard to get right wingers to support bullshit charities like progressives.
If I came up with a little cap buster and bb gun safety course and exam, and printed up little certificates to kids that passed it, would any of you guys donate money?
A woman I knew in college tried the “no guns” thing with her little boy.
Guess what the first thing he made when he got Play-doh was?
I would have loved that Tommy Burst set when I was a kid.
Not entirely sure that I wouldn’t play with it now if no one was watching.
A ball gag?
I had a toy Winchester capshooter with a little piece of metal on the lever/trigger guard — so I could shoot off caps just by working the lever, like Chuck Connors on “The Rifleman.”
One of my brothers had one of those McGehee. They also had a handgun like 007 that shot plastic bullets and ejected the cartridges. My dad hated that thing since he was always running over spent cartridges we didn’t find with the lawn mower.
Spies, little boys will point a Barbie doll at their sisters and yell “Bang! Bang!” just to make them cry.
Okay. How about a program where we take unwanted, misunderstood guns around to schools and community gatherings and work with people to be more tolerant and understanding of them once they really get to know them.
I am thinking of calling it “Guns Are People, Too!”
Any backers?
My brother also had a toy Tommy gun but I’m not sure it was the one in the ad Darleen posted. We also got toy guns that used a spring to fire round pellets at a safely slow speed.
Dart guns, squirt guns, even a toy spring-loaded bazooka that could launch a small potato a nice distance. And later, BB guns.
The best, though, as when my brother would buy illegal firecrackers and we’d use a small length of narrow pipe to fire some tiny never-gonna-get-ripe grapefruits or oranges from the backyard trees over the garage like mortar rounds.
I never got a cap gun, but used a squirt gun as part of my Man from UNCLE spy outfit
had a trench coat, black turtleneck sweater, an old silver pen from my dad as my communicator and an Official Fan Club i.d. card that made me an agent.
good times!
My twin grandsons have a large plastic storage box full of nerf guns that shoot foam bullets.
Guess we’re bad bad grandparents teaching ’em to shoot their friends ..
My mom tried that “no toy guns” thing on me — hey, it was the ’60s, it’s what all the enlightened parents were doing! Though she did break down and get me that Marx Electric Shooting Gallery thing I’d been begging for for years, presumably under the principle that I couldn’t “pretend to shoot my friends and classmates”, only tiny metal ducks in a plastic box. Best toy ever.
Needless to say, I started buying real guns shortly after I moved out; a fact I like to bring up from time to time, just to annoy her.
– As kids we all lorved, just lorved playing all the fantasies of attack and defense in and around our tree houses, my trusty Red-rider carbine by my side at all times. Later the carbine was replaced by a pump action version as I recall, and pellet pistols eventually
-….and still later it was Whizzer motor bikes until we could graduate to cars. Thinking back I remember the most fun was tending to the wounded after the “wars”. All the boys wanted to p;ay the “doctor”, and the girls all lorved being “victims” happily enough. We were too young and dumb to really know what we were doing or to be too wicked.
– I remember one of the alternatives to the Whizzer, which was made by Schwin bicycle company, was a twin cylinder motor bike made by the Old Jack and Heintz corporation for a short time during and just after WWII. They were quite rare because only a 100 or so were ever made. The design was, of all things, done by Zeppo Marx. Him and one of the other Marx brothers being investors in J&H at the time. Jack used to ride one up and down the halls of the company during the war. Oddly enough in later years I worked at that same aircraft plant in Chagrin falls Ohio, totally unaware of the connection with my childhood. I ran across all the info doing some nostalgic research about 10 years ago on the net.
– I remember all this well because I was working there the day JFK got nuetralized with prejudice..
Those lever action bb guns looked nice but if you were serious about shooting a bb gun what you wanted was the Daisy Model 25 Pump.
Oh John, I remember that!
My fave place to go to at Disneyland was the shooting arcade in Frontierland.
I’m glad to see it is still there, even as it is infrared now instead of bb’s
Had a lever-action Daisy. Always wanted a Crosman .22 pump-up pellet rifle, but never got one.
At one time kids who visited FBI headquarters were allowed to fire a burst from a Tommy gun as part of the tour, or so I’ve heard. No more.
– For some strange reason Hoover always favored little boys.
geoffb, the Daisy 25 could also shoot wooden matches so that the match would ignite when it hit something hard. If that wasn’t good enough, you could break the head off a match, put a needle in the end and convert the Daisy to a pump-action blow-gun.
And we never shot anybody’s eye out.
Funny you should say that, here’s an ad from PRK Arms that aired on the local AM station before Christmas…
Never thought of that one RI Red.
In looking for the picture I just found out that Daisy recently started making the Mod-25 again after stopping in 1978. Looks like an after Christmas gift will be coming soon.
We (2 brothers and half a dozen cousins) made “flipper guns”, a wood gun with a clothes pin for a hammer, cut a car inner tube in one inch sections like giant rubber bands, tied a knot in the middle, and had tremendous wars across 5 acres. My oldest brother even made a flipper gun [assault] rifle, with tractor tube ordnance.
I also learned at a tender age how to make a tennis ball mortar. It involved two tennis ball cans, wooden matches, and lighter fluid.
We had bottle rocket wars (including between the upper floors of the dorms at college). For variety we added Roman Candles and a crew served (one to light, one to shoot) M80 slingshot. It’s amazing we survived childhood. 8-)
OT but good lord … I never thought I’d come across a live British communist who would hang in with a conversation on twitter with me, but wow, what an education in pure delusion!
O/T: Norman Schwarzkopf has died.
After he gets rid of toy guns will he go after index fingers and thumbs? Every kid has done the finger gun gesture at least once.
There have been kids expelled from school for drawing a picture of a gun on paper.
My fave ‘toy’ projectile launcher: a standard wooden clothespin, reassembled as a spring launcher for wooden matches.
The match gun ignited the thing and launched the burning stick several yards. If fired in brush, you’d be rewarded by a nice fire, troubling to any adult witnessing.
I put one together as a demo for a teenager, who promptly burned up a car wash. So, no more of those!
The worst ‘toy’ guns are those in modern video games. Desensitizing crazies to horrific deaths. I’m sure the only commonality in all these crazy kids (besides teh crazee) is addiction to shooter games.
Before we were even teenagers, every kid in my old neighborhood could make a decent firecracker out of a roll (or two) of caps, a straight pin, some masking tape, and a couple of matches. Somehow we survived and didn’t grow up to be terrorists.
i just bought nephew person a shooter thinger it’s called farcry i saw it on the tv it was just coming out so i got it for him cause of it was a pretty sure thing he wouldn’t have it already
niece person got uggs
Uggs banned at Pennsylvania school to deter cellphone smugglers
Should’ve bought him a book, ‘feets. Might’ve been his first.
Civilians should not want to be able to buy a Spartan Laser or Covenant Fuel Rod Cannon.
On a prominent lane information sign above I-40, informing drivers arriving to Tennessee from Arkansas:
Tennessee roadway deaths
2011 – 937
2012 – 1000
Something obviously needs banning.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
I vote that we ban socialist and communist governments.
What our DemoCommies want is something like the PRC is doing: one-Party control of a managed Capitalist society, with enough control to prevent any real troubling ‘freedoms’.
All boys need this book.
Greetings:
Even though I grew up in the Bronx in the afterglow of WWII, I was always more inclined to the cowboy ways. I had the twin Fanner Fiftys cap pistol rig which was, unfortunately, one of the banes of my dear mother’s existence.
One summer’s day, she took me and my sister to the movies, double-features in those days. The second movie was “The Charge at Feather River”, not only an oat-burner, but a 3-D oat-burner. I was allowed to wear my rig but was warned against bringing any caps. In one of the very few failures of my mother’s eternal vigilance program, she forgot the body cavity search and I managed to secret two full rolls on my person. During the intermission, I went off to the lavatory and loaded up.
The highlight of the movie for me was the, you guessed it, “The Charge at Feather River”. The besieged cowpokes and cavalry were attacked by the ferocious, in those days, pre-Native Americans. In unison, they loosed their arrows and spears which, through the miracle of 3-D, seemed to come pouring out of the screen directly at me. What’s a boy-cowboy to do but to shoot up some caps to protect his mother, sister, and self. However, before I could get off even a handful of shots, my mother had re-established her normal level of control of both my property and my person.
Later that evening, my mother came into my room with that twinkle in her eye that meant “Your father wants to talk to you in the living room.” Denotations aside, the obvious connotation was that parental supervision had been kicked up a notch to the ultimate level. When I arrived in the living room, my father was involved with his evening beer, cigarette, and newspaper. I sat down as quietly as possible on the couch. My father lowered his broadsheet and gave me his sternest look. He then began his pre-waterboarding days interrogation.
“So,” my father began, “your mother took you to the movies this afternoon.” “She did,” I replied as my father’s look told me that that was all the answer required. “And, she let you take your six-guns.” Again, only the “She did.” “But, she told you no caps.” Once more, the “She did,” as the in-terror-gation proceeded along its course. “And, you took some anyway.” A quick switch to an “I did.” “And, you shot them off in the theater.” Again, an “I did” followed by a failed attempt to begin a litany of excuses for my actions.
“So,” my father began as he took a Lucky Strike pause, “How many Injuns d’ya kill?”
That’s a great story, 11B40. Your dad had the great poker face from this and some other stories.
He doesn’t read a lot he’s an athlete he wants to go into the navy
So a little desensitization is probably okey dokey
Nice story, 11B40.
The book has a whole section knots. One of those things sailors need to know.
on knots
Stupid keyboard
Is it age appropriate I guess he’s whoa bout 13 now
It says 8 – 80, so yeah.
Why? Next thing you’ll tell me is that civilians should not want to be able to buy the M-920 Cain.
;-)
How they seem to think:
http://allergic2bull.blogspot.com/2012/12/fire-erik-loomis-to-defend-freedom-of.html
Tell me Patrick, why do you need a military grade wave-motion gun mounted in the hood of your astro car? Nebulonic-Deer hunting is it? C’mon! Shock turrets, torpedos, and three wings of fighters in your trunk ain’t good enough for you? Leader Desslock questions your motives!
@paleomerus:
Need is never a valid limitation. I like ending most of my missions with one shot. So there. :-)
Otherwise, it takes two shots from the Cain to destroy the final boss in Mass Effect 2.
Usually…
Twice is coincidence.
Hasn’t happened a third time, but if it does it’s probably a sign that the game hates me or I’m getting old. :-o
OT:
MI & Union bosses.
In Serenity I seem to remember Mal vetoing Jayne’s grenades because they wouldn’t need them. Which they didn’t, until the Reavers showed up. And Jayne made sure to remind Mal of that during the chase.
I recently submitted a comment to my local paper pointing out that the word “need” not only appears nowhere in the Second Amendment, but has no occurrence anywhere in the entire Bill of Rights. “Imagine if the government could regulate speech, religion or the press on the basis of ‘need.'”
so many children are learning at an early age, through the toy guns they play with, that it’s okay just to pretend to kill their friends and fellow schoolmates
THAT’S RIGHT! All this ‘pretending” with toy guns is bad. Teach the little suckers that the only kids it’s OK to kill are the ones too little to breathe on their own. Replace those toy guns with toy syringes, scalpels, scissors, vacuums and candy “Plan B” pills! After all, the only time it’s ever OK to kill someone is within six months of busting a nut.
Geoffb, it gets worse. The BBs we weren’t shooting got glued to an M-80 along with some ball bearings. Put it in a shoebox, lit it and ran like hell. One ball bearing smacked my little bro in the back of his head. Made him swear not to tell Mom. But it didn’t put his eye out, either.
My misspent youth must account for the collection of things that go bang that were all sadly stored in Jeff’s boat. Damn, but that lake is getting crowded.
Me, I’ll take a modern Lancer with the chainsaw bayonet.
I remember shooting matches out of my lever action pellet/BB pistol. I’d sharpen the ends into stakes hoping they might stick into wood, but I don’t think it actually did anything. We shot them with the head on the inside so the friction going out would light it.
I had a pump gun before that handed down to me by a neighborhood kid but I shattered a seashell decoration in a neighbor’s yard with it, using BB’s, and it was taken away and when I got it back a year later, I overpumped it and blew out the bladder. So I got the lever action pistol at a yard sale.
At one point I figured out that bird seed was little BB’s which made my pistol a shotgun. Sadly birdseed is nonmagnetic so you had to keep the gun barrel tipped up until you were ready to fire. The idea of a cotton plug never occurred to me to try. And I’m glad that I never thought of the birdseed shotgun idea when I had a pump-up.
I was never the type to shoot at people or animals. I was bummed out the first time I went hunting with cousins, with a real (rented) rifle but I really never hit or even spot the deer anyway. I had a ceremonial hunting trip where I shot a deer with an uncle’s .30-30. It was one of those scrawny litle bucks we call summer deer. With my cousins I quickly I found out that I was there to help carry and dress to get a share of the meat more than to find and kill a deer. I was popular with the group because I was more about dry smoked deer sausage than chops or steaks or roast or grind. I was happy to take home stuff made from the cheap shit and pick it up later and never begged for antlers or pelt. as And once we had the meat at the game butcher we’d all go to Dairy Queen and talk about stuff which was great. One of us (the guy who didn’t wear glasses) had the killer’s rifle. The other three had ” I’m not a wuss/just in case” rifles. Last time I did that was 1996 though. I guess I kind of miss it.
There was one bad season when my cousin tried to butcher and grind the deer himself to save us all some time and money. We didn’t get our share that year. Best not to talk about it.