When I was a child, we played with guns all of the time. Not real guns, of course (although I suppose that there are children who are taught to play properly with those at quite a young age as well!) But we played with toy guns regularly. My siblings and I were the kind of kids that played cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians and did reenactments of movies that had guns.

As we got older, we got into different kinds of gun play. Paintball guns and airsoft guns. We got kwa guns and tokyo marui guns one year for Christmas so we could spend the rest of our winter break getting better at airsoft together. We had a great time!

These days, of course, you’re not supposed to let kids play with guns. Whether it’s pop cap guns or airsoft guns, it’s supposed to be off limits. Supposedly playing with guns makes kids violent. But my siblings and I are all grown up now and I can’t say that any of us have ever done anything violent. And as far as I am aware, none of the people in the neighborhood who we played these games with have done anything violent either.

So who is to say that kids shouldn’t play with guns? Should they be taught safety and the difference between games and reality? Of course. But will playing with guns make them violent? Seems unlikely to me!

Technorati Tags: airsoft guns, kwa guns, tokyo marui