I'm so tired of gun toys
It's all a bit triggering, ha.
I’ve written about guns and kids a lot12 over the years. We made an episode of
about school shootings with that I am really proud of3, and I talk about kids and guns to anyone who seems vaguely interested (please, ask me why I want my kid to skip lockdown drills4, would love to talk to you about THAT whole thing). However, I’ve also had the experience of saying the most gentle thing about lockdown drills to parents on the playground and suddenly they’re in tears. It’s understandable, because we’re basically terrorized as parents by the idea of school shootings. But it also has made me not want to talk to other parents about guns WHICH IS BAD. We really have to talk about guns.And unfortunately, I have to keep talking to my kids about guns, which is very annoying. It’s our daughter’s 4th birthday today, and I thought I might write a dreamy sort of sad thing about it because I woke up all full of feelings, as we do on our kids birthdays. (A therapist once told me that I should schedule ‘thinking walks,’ so I had set times to go down the little rabbit holes my brain wants to go down. That was 3 years ago and I never did it, but I think I’ll def. do a thinking walk today.)
ANYWAY, instead, I’m writing about guns, and all the stupid horrible disgusting grotesque gun toys that positively leap off the shelves of every grocery store with a toy aisle. They dazzle my kid, who is 7.5 and thinks guns look awesome for reasons I’ve sincerely tried to understand but end up not understanding and then having to excuse myself to go cry.
This is coming up today because yesterday, he had a friend over and they agreed (apparently) to a toy swap that resulted in my kid getting his friend’s giant gun toy. (This is actually the 2nd time he has pulled this off, but with a differently friend and the gun toy he scored last time sucked so I THOUGHT he’d learned a valuable lesson, oops.)
This morning, after a few little birthday moments of sweetness and excitement, he came wandering out of his room holding what looks like a machine gun. Like, it’s all plastic and highlighter-hued, but it was a disturbing sight.
He started showing me how to load it and talking about how much it looked like a machine gun (excuse me, how do you know what a machine gun is?!) and I lost it. By lost it, I mean I started quietly but relentlessly and probably slightly frighteningly talking about why David and I haven’t bought him gun toys and why we don’t want them in the house. I said everything I could think of except the only thing I wanted to say which is that GUNS ARE THE NUMBER ONE CAUSE OF DEATH FOR KIDS IN THE U.S.5
How sick is it that we have to walk past this when we’re just like, buying cheese?
I just don’t think we fight hard enough against this. I mean fight this literally inside our house and inside our liberal bubble of family and friends here in Portland. We haven’t fought hard enough against it, and we are some of the more rule-y people I know about gun toys. I have been floored by how many folks have gun toys, but then I get all awkward feeling and so I don’t say something totally normal and fine like, Oh sorry, we don’t allow gun toys, because I’m so afraid to make other parents feel judged.
Maybe a grandparent gave it to you and you just don’t have the energy for that battle today. I get it! I really truly do. The gun stuff (fear, trauma, more fear, frustration with our country etc etc) is so close to the bone for oh, I don’t know, I’d guess all of us who live in this violent stupid country where people can carry guns in their purses and like, shoved into their pants6 and where our schools need metal detectors and randos can purchase AR-15s for fun (?). I get it! My kid has gotten gun toys over the years and you know what? I, too, was not clear and firm enough to him, or to the gift givers, about the fact that we don’t want them in our house. I’ve been afraid to rock the boat, to make people feel bad, to upset my kid, and I’ve been afraid that if I am too hard ass about it, I’ll accidentally raise a gun influencer.
But, what better day to wake up out of my slow slump towards giving up than my daughter’s birthday. All my wishes for her are wrapped up in this shift. I want a better world for her so badly, I wanter her to be safe, to be happy, to be free. So, I’m going to take all the joy and hope and love that’s flooding us today as excellent fuel. I’m going to de-gun our home again, and try to de-gun my son’s idea of what’s cool. I’ll imagine the world I want for our kids, and I’ll try harder to build it, step by little step.
I will hold that jarring feeling of seeing him go from hugging his sister and coveting the sparkly gem on her new birthday dress to (minutes later) walking down the stairs carrying a massive gun toy, gleefully showing me how to load it, how many “rounds” it holds, squinting one eye to aim it at various things around our house, and I will hold the line. I’ll try to listen and talk to him, and gently help him understand why we are so serious about this gun thing, if I can. We’ll think even harder about the movies he sees, and even the stories we’re telling (shout out to
‘s BoyMom!). Even if that means a back-pedal, we totally can do better.I think we’re at a brink. I’d started to slip. His sneaky trades to get guns made me think I’d failed. Then, I bought him a squirt gun at Dollar Tree on a day when I had very little fight in me. But today I feel ready to pull us back, like maybe it’s more exhausting to give up that it is to work towards other possibilities. Maybe this won’t even be harder, maybe it’ll just be different.
I have no idea what’s right in a universal sense in terms of gun toys. Whenever I read about gun toys and kids (of course Melinda over at
has covered it7), the studies seem all over the map and I end up confused about my screeching gut feeling that gun toys are a problem. What I know for sure is that real guns hurt and kill real kids far too often, that gun culture8 seems really sick to me, and I can’t set that aside when I see little kids pretend to shoot at each other. Have you had a Nerf gun pointed in your face by your own child? That’s, uh, not a good feeling. Whatever valid complexities child development folks may see in a moment like that, I think that “OH MY GOD my baby just aimed a GUN AT MY FACE” probably a feeling worth listening to and examining very closely.Of all the random things we say ‘no’ to, why not gun toys?
https://www.romper.com/parenting/how-to-ask-about-guns-in-the-home-safe-storage
https://www.romper.com/parenting/moms-in-other-countries-on-guns-in-america
https://www.romper.com/parenting/against-lockdown-drills-school-shooting
New Report Highlights U.S. 2022 Gun-Related Deaths: Firearms Remain Leading Cause of Death for Children and Teens, and Disproportionately Affect People of Color, https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-remain-leading-cause-of-death-for-children-and-teens
https://everytownresearch.org/rankings/law/open-carry-regulated/ (literally saw a guy with a big gun shoved into the back of his pants at a mini mart halfway between Portland and the coast last weekend. My son goes “that man must be a police” and I’m like nope, he definitely is not please stop talking and just pick a snack or I will pick one for you we are leaving.
Read this thread about kids and gun toys at your own risk (I don’t even really recommend it) https://www.reddit.com/r/Firearms/comments/18olfgy/parents_what_toys_to_teach_kids_gun_handling/
Not to be rude, but this is exactly the sort of parenting that drives boys towards Andrew Tate and other stupid right wing influencer stuff.
Fascination with weapons, competition, violence, etc. is a pretty normal and innate part of growing up as a boy. I and all the other boys I grew up with were into violent video games, nerf/paintball, violent movies, etc. We all grew up to be peaceful, respectful, psychological healthy and well socialized adults.
You're projecting your own fear of real guns as a concerned mother onto your son, and in the process you're stigmatizing his innate personality & masculinity. You're inadvertently sending the message that his natural inclinations are sick or abnormal or morally suspect. Most people are reasonably emotionally intelligent and therefore won't ultimate take this stuff personally. Those who don't meet this threshold become Andrew Tate followers.
I have 4 sons, now ages 19-27. I planned on/expected to have a "no toy guns/no gun play" house too. It didn't work out that way. I wrote this a few yrs ago about why & what I learned - https://buildingboys.net/weapons-play-is-ok/
Related: my oldest son was obsessed with/fascinated by guns at age 6. Checked out a whole big book at the library and spent HOURS tracing guns. (I wrote about this in my book, Building Boys: Raising Great Guys in a World that Misunderstands Males). What I eventually realized is that learning about the guns and how the guns changed through time was his entry into learning about American wars - it was his portal into learning about history. We ended up creating what we called a "War Wall"upstairs -- a crude timeline that included dates of wars, interspersed with other world events & when people in our family were born -- and he'd place his pics of the weapons in the correct time period & we'd all learn more. He is now 27, completing a Master's in business administration, & does not own a gun. He's also the person I go to any time I have a question about American history. :)