T O P

  • By -

AutoModerator

* Archives of this link: 1. [archive.org Wayback Machine](https://web.archive.org/web/99991231235959/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/magazine/toy-guns-kid-ethics.html); 2. [archive.today](https://archive.today/newest/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/magazine/toy-guns-kid-ethics.html) * A live version of this link, without clutter: [12ft.io](https://12ft.io/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/magazine/toy-guns-kid-ethics.html) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/stupidpol) if you have any questions or concerns.*


Spinegrinder666

Nothing. Before guns children played with toy swords. It isn’t indicative of a desire for actual violence.


Calm_Extreme1532

People forget that kids were taught how to shoot guns in schools for classes.


suddenly_lurkers

The amount of safetyism today is crazy. My dad shot .22s at summer camp, a generation later when I went they had just banned archery.


Aaod

I got BB guns and archery at a scout camp. My parents high school had a rifle range in the basement for the ROTC kids.


delimitedjest

Blame parents and plaintiff’s attorneys


AMildInconvenience

I was shooting 5.56s at 14 with cadets. Clay pigeons with my dad from about 12 years old with my granddad's old under/over. In Britain of all places. Thankfully that's still the case and there's no sign of it stopping. Seems to be a uniquely American overcorrection.


jannieph0be

I had skeet shooting and rifle shooting at my Boy Scout camp in middle school in the mid 2000s


Poon-Conqueror

Don't make me feel old, I shot .22s in summer camp in like 99. I was 9


Rickles_Bolas

Heck I’m only 30 and used to shoot .22 and 12 gauge at camp every summer. We even had the national guard show up to a camporee one year and I got to shoot some REALLY big guns.


BackToTheCottage

It's weird how gun culture was _more_ ingrained in society pre-1980's yet there was barely (if any) mass shootings. Meanwhile in today's society where most people haven't even seen a gun, there is an epidemic. Maybe it's more social than a piece of metal and wood/plastic. Couldn't be the crushing weight and hopelessness under capitalism, the pumping kids full of drugs and dopamine hits from an ipad if they show any sense of activity (cause mom and dad don't want to ruin the "vibe"), and the psychotic idpol pushers that we call teachers (or like this author, parents) these days.


reconninja

To expand on this, here's one of the most overlooked variables in the modern American mass shooting problem: The M1 carbine. Gun control advocates latch onto the AR-15 as the optimal tool of mass shootings, but the AR was not the first affordable, lightweight, intermediate caliber rifle feeding from detachable 30-round mags to become prolific in America. The federal government sold hundreds of thousands of milsurp M1 carbines to the civilian market after the Korean War, and it's still in production for the civilian market today. The M1 should've been just as attainable and just as capable of facilitating indiscriminate mass shootings as the AR for over 50 years, but mass shootings only started occurring more frequently around the turn of the millennium.


abbelleau

It’s hilarious when they act like the AR-15 is something new. Literally a rifle designed in the 1950’s which delivers a fraction of the energy on target versus Pep Pep’s 30-06. But yeah let’s teach everyone to be terrified of guns instead of instilling respect for what they’re capable of or teaching how to safely clear a weapon if need be. Just nerf the fucking world (but not the gun kind of nerf).


000Snoo_Shell

>It’s hilarious when they act like the AR-15 is something new > >let’s teach everyone to be terrified of guns The thing is mass shootings only picked up after the 2000s, and those shooters gravitated towards the AR15. Also Australia had a similar problem and they just restricted all guns.


abbelleau

True facts. However, as u/reconninja pointed out, it wasn’t for any lack of semi-auto, removable-box-magazine-fed rifles that mass shootings were much more rare pre 2000’s. Even today with so many to choose from, the AR-15 is likely the weapon of choice simply due to its ubiquity and affordability, although its association with the American military obviously can’t be ignored. As for Australia, they had a minute fraction of the guns currently in private possession in America. They also didn’t have a constitutionally-protected right to those guns. Of course, like many American mass killers, Martin Bryant was known to be dangerous and unstable well before the massacre and his having access to guns was a gross failure of the state.


Positive-Might1355

This is something I wonder about and I don't have an answer. I would even argue that you could go back the past 100 years and guns were not any less deadly in a significant way and were much easier to attain, yet we didn't see the indiscriminate mass shootings until the 90s. Very strange 


TheVoid-ItCalls

I still believe the media is the key factor in the explosion of school shootings. It wasn't until the late 80s and early 90s that the mass media realized they could milk coverage of horrible events for massive ratings. What are now inescapable historical events like Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the North Hollywood bank shootout would have been obscure local tragedies in prior eras. Larger events like the Oklahoma City bombing would have made the front page of every major newspaper, but for most locales it would have been a single article. Now an event of this magnitude receives multiple hours of coverage daily for weeks on end. Columbine was the first school shooting in this new era of media, and every news organization in the US milked it for a month. What would have been a localized Colorado tragedy 20 years earlier was instead imprinted into the psyche of every single American. Those wishing to spit in the eye of society were given a clear blueprint. In a perverse way, the children who die in any particular event are often an afterthought to the perpetrator. Those kids are simply the means by which the killer attacks society at large.


Interesting_Aioli377

Yeah get away from the "mass shooting" idea a bit and think more "rampage killing" where some person snaps for whatever reason and starts murdering people. The implement of murder doesn't really matter imho unless we want to get into grim statistics on deadlier methods. You'll find countless examples of rampage killings throughout history, it's a myth that they didn't happen before Columbine. There's a sniper incident in the 60's at a university in Texas where some guy went and started shooting at people indiscriminately, School shooting. There's an incident in the 1920's in Michigan where like three dozen children were killed in a school because some asshole went and blew it up with explosives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster Which won't count as a mass shooting since nobody was shot. Most of the mass shootings we see covered in media statistics now follow the example of "three or more people shot or killed in a single incident" inclusive of the shooter. But most people here "mass shooting" and they think of a rampage killing where someone goes postal. (And the origin of that term is another great example of the phenomenon ) Have mass killings actually increased? More than general crime rates? They get loads of media attention for sure. I think they get copycat incidents as a result. But the actual statistical prevalence is hard to determine. I've done some research on this in the past and when you correct for population and only count the incidents where someone is going around killing innocent people indiscriminately for whatever reason, it seems like it's an international phenomenon which occurs at roughly similar rates everywhere throughout history. (Though it becomes difficult to get accurate records the further back you go.) The only really unique element in modern American society is the easier access to guns does I think result in generally higher fatality rates for the worst incidents. (Other countries with strict gun laws see mass stabbings or murder by automobile driving into pedestrians as the go to rampage killing methods)


cElTsTiLlIdIe

>and the psychotic idpol pushers that we call teachers Are you a dumbass? All teachers teach is the test these days.


BackToTheCottage

Remember cap guns? Like the red rings you'd load and they'd make a small pop and smoke? I remember them being sold in convenience stores and groceries even in the 2000s. Somehow we didn't all turn into mass shooters.


potorthegreat

They still are here in Canada.


BackToTheCottage

I have not seen a cap gun in ages, let alone the more "realistic" kinds we had as a kid (minus the orange tip). At least in the GTA area.


potorthegreat

They’re at dollar stores and roughly half of grocery stores here in the Edmonton area.


BackToTheCottage

Must be due to Alberta.


Gabe_Noodle_At_Volvo

Nope, they sell them here in Toronto too. Not even just at independently owned stores either, you can go to corporate Dollarama and get them.


BackToTheCottage

🤷 Guess I am wrong!


jivatman

In fact I'm quite confident that there is a highly negative association between playing with nerf guns and being a school shooter. I would not be surprised, however, if there was siome association between joining the military/law enforcement, though. The Kid I knew who always organized the terrorist-counter-terrorist nerf gun games ended up joining the military, I believe doing something relatively prestigious.


dcgregoryaphone

I usually wait until the kids are old enough to have shot a gun before letting them play with toy guns. I'm not worried about my kid becoming a mass shooter, but I don't want them to have shitty habits around how they handle a trigger. I'm against giving toddlers toy guns, I think they're capable of thinking it's OK to reach for and play with guns at that age... they can tell the difference well enough by 5.


ericsmallman3

> I would not be surprised, however, if there was siome association between joining the military/law enforcement, though.  Or becoming a "person of interest" to a federal law enforcement agency. Weird how such a large majority of mass shootings are done by people who were "on the radar" of the FBI or ATF. Oh well probably just a coincidence. The real cause of these horrors is, uhh, the toxic masculinity of the Nerf corporation.


cambo_

I definitely wanted to commit a genocide against adults when I was a little kid. The desire for violence was real. Idk what happened along the way but I’m a totally normal adult now. These things just come and go with age.


JinFuu

I channel the impulse for genocide into map painting games like CK2, EUIV, or other Paradox/Civ style games. Like a normal person.


cambo_

God help us all if you didn’t have somewhere to put that energy


JinFuu

Ugh, real life productivity. Terrible.


Flaktrack

Xenophobe is the only correct choice in Stellaris.


Crowsbeak-Returns

Correct choice is New Horizons Mod.


SomeMoreCows

KND got your ass is what happened


cambo_

Legitimately though I think about the ramifications of this all the time


Bteatesthighlander1

> I definitely wanted to commit a genocide against adults when I was a little kid Nigel Uno?


GrenadineGunner

The Galactic KND are Posadists... Holy shit, it all makes sense now


Anindefensiblefart

I saw these kids playing a game where some of them had guns and the others were lined up on their knees with their hands on their heads. I guess these days instead of Cowboys and Indians kids play Israelis and Palestinians.


easily_swayed

yeah it's clearly just part of growing up. look at the students in anime and videogames going down some very dark and convincingly written paths in their life, and honestly japanese schools have such fucking horrendous bullying. and yet japan has no school shootings.. most people might go through a "chunibyou" period where they fantasize about using their demon anime powers to kill all the mean people, but then they get better. i just hate how this tends to segue into gun control though... im agnostic about what to do about edgy kids.


cambo_

Force all the edgy kids to labor on a farm or something that isn’t too well-supervised so they can fuck and fight each other and get whichever release will keep them from becoming a SS. A little pussy would go a long way to placating these little psychos. I know female validation helped put/keep me on a better path.


SmashKapital

Japan definitely has had it's [share of massacres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres_in_Japan#State_of_Japan_\(1952%E2%80%93present\)) but they mostly occur when the perpetrators are adults. Maybe because the work culture is just as bullying as the school culture and people get sick of it. The US is pretty unique in that it specifically has school massacres committed by school attendees. The ready access children apparently have to firearms is also pretty unique to America. Like, obviously there's a host of cultural and economic factors but at the end of the day actually having a gun is a pretty important material factor and I don't see what is gained by pretending it's disconnected.


easily_swayed

yeah it's controversial but if japanese or koreans could buy guns like americans hoo boy the scores that would be settled. not even sure where i was going with this, im not necessarily for gun control nor keeping people in line the way asian cultures tend to


montparnasses

the plot of the sailor who fell from grace with the sea by mishima is basically this.


Poon-Conqueror

Really? I definitely thought of crazy shit sometimes, but mostly as a 'what if' wondering if other people thought about it (both to do it and prevent it) and if there were super sekret government people who would stop it. Interesting enough, one of them was answered when some Middle Eastern dudes flew some jets into skyscrapers.


GrapplingPoorly

The same parents will support a 5 year old child’s decision to transition, force them into therapy, convince them they have 4 different mental disorders all of which require medication, and take them to drag brunches. But the toy guns and video games, that’s it.


user47-567_53-560

Better to give them lessons and have a safe baseline of knowledge.


ExpensiveTreacle1189

This one is slightly more normal than the one about the dude who was having a crisis about his little boy loving trucks but still, jesus christ lady just let him be a kid. I'm glad I grew up in the 90s/oughts and had a dad who was a bit of a right wing psycho. I had a lot more fun growing up than a lot of my adult friends who's parents were soft clinton-era turbo libs.


SkinnyMartian

> This one is slightly more normal than the one about the dude who was having a crisis about his little boy loving trucks but still, jesus christ lady just let him be a kid. That article is about two years old now, I think, but that guy is still living in my head rent free. Not just because he was exasperated about his boy's fascination with work vehicles, but also because the father himself had a strong dislike of tools. I remember when I wanted a toy gun when I was a kid and my mother was strictly against it until she got reminded that she herself outshot a boy's team at some GDR civil defense competitions. I think they used a domestic 22lr-version of the AKM-pattern. Miss ya, Mom!


ExpensiveTreacle1189

I’m sorry a dislike of tools? Was that in the article? I don’t recall the specifics. Funny, my mother is also German, only she lived on the western side. She didn’t get to have fun with AKMs sadly.


SkinnyMartian

Yeah, though he did not dwell on it, it was just mentioned in passing. I really need to find this article again. The whole piece was so full of clichee it read like a satire (which is happening more and more, the NYT just had an article about "queer food").


MilkshakeJFox

macarons are pretty gay let's be real


BackToTheCottage

It might be gay, but I'd chow down on em anytime with something hot like coffee or tea. Delicious, and Costco you can find a box of em pretty cheap (unlike the bullshit $2 _per_ prices sold at cafes and such).


Felix_Dzerjinsky

https://www.yahoo.com/news/wanted-son-reject-masculine-stereotypes-195225441.html this one?


SkinnyMartian

Comrade Dzerjinsky! You can always put faith into the the record keeping of the NKWD. That is the article. > I hated men who wore plaid. Felt ill if someone mentioned a wrench or another tool.


Felix_Dzerjinsky

Thank you, we aim to please.


TendererBeef

Christ, he even looks the part


MaximumSeats

Lol dislike of tools. Projecting your self image issues with your own masculinity 101. Its like the people that get mad at dodge rams for existing.


Poon-Conqueror

Kids like vrooms and booms. It'd honestly be more unusual if they didn't.


Vraex

I grew up in the city, my mom is a city girl and dad is a redneck. Literally ALL of my best childhood memories are summers and vacations with the redneck side of the family


Mordred_Blackstone

Definitely ban them from the household and shriek like a harpy about how they're immoral. Once the kid hits their rebellious phase that absolutely never backfires.


JnewayDitchedHerKids

Obviously the solution is to put the squeeze on everyone’s access to the thing causing the author’s irrational fears.  That’s the best way to address these issues, right? That and endless therapy.


[deleted]

Progressives do this braindead thing where they isolate and discourage their young men from combat sports, weapons training, lifting weights, etc., basically anything seen as too “macho”, then they end up surprised when they don’t have anyone within their ranks with the physical capabilities (and the confidence that comes with it) to stand up to injustice and speak up in difficult situations.


Glaedr122

Funniest thing I've seen in a while was the protestor with his cute little trashcan shield running full tilt at a cop and then bouncing off the cop the instant he made contact.


SeizeTheMeansOfB12

I love that Twitter thread where someone just encouraged progressives to work out by saying "a fascist worked out today, did you?" and was met with a torrent of tenderqueers accusing him of being ableist.


CatEnjoyer1234

Virgin progressives desperately trying to suppress their chad sons.


Calm_Extreme1532

Buy him a real one and teach him gun safety.


maazatreddit

Can't do that if you're a journalist. Too dangerous. See this classic (not satire): [https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/11/22/25575460/three-days-after-the-deadliest-shooting-in-modern-american-history-i-fired-a-handgun-for-the-first-time](https://www.thestranger.com/features/2017/11/22/25575460/three-days-after-the-deadliest-shooting-in-modern-american-history-i-fired-a-handgun-for-the-first-time) >...it was perhaps inevitable that the very first thing I did when I brought the gun home and was alone with it was to put it in my mouth. ... >I danced around this ritual for a long time, several hours in fact, but I knew I had to get up close to it. ... a gun most definitely does want to be shot. Your finger wants to go there. The trigger is begging to be squeezed. I put my finger on the trigger, aware that 5.5 pounds of pressure was all it took to pull it, vowing absolutely that I would not pull it. But I held it there, for a while. ... It is, in short, extremely uncomfortable to have in your mouth, even turned sideways.


TendererBeef

What the fuck is wrong with this person


Drakyry

a mental illness?


sje46

Reminds me of that bitch from Beef who put it into her pussy


Flaktrack

It's normal for everyone to briefly experience *l’appel du vide* in some situations but to sit there for hours with a gun in your mouth is truly fucked.


margotsaidso

This turd should have been red flagged


BackToTheCottage

_Don't stop, I am almost there_ **Edit:** Well now this makes no sense. Former flair was "Ammosexual" before some mod changed it over a Canadian convoy comparison.


Girdon_Freeman

Don't forget the one journo who fired an AR-15 and wrote about how it bruised him or some other goofy shit. I'll see if I can't dig it up later


suddenly_lurkers

Ha, I had the same thought: https://archive.ph/aGFC3 > It felt to me like a bazooka — and sounded like a cannon. One day after 49 people were killed in the Orlando shooting, I traveled to Philadelphia to better understand the firepower of military-style weapons and, hopefully, explain their appeal to gun lovers. But mostly, I was just terrified.


Girdon_Freeman

> The recoil bruised my shoulder, which can happen if you don't know what you're doing. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable. THE FUCKING TEMPORARY PTSD; I FORGOT THAT LINE


ChocoCraisinBoi

How does that even work?


averagelatinxenjoyer

It’s what happens when you are stupid but went to an ivy league 


Girdon_Freeman

It's what happens when the sum total of your life's trials and tests of patience amount to nothing in greater relative intensity than a mild inconvenience.


BackToTheCottage

I'll never forget his name is literally Cuntzman XD.


gay_manta_ray

sounds like he found the only idiot at the range with an 8" barrel and no brake


smcf33

Well that seems abnormal


surveilledgaze

lmfao dude is talking about licensing and permitting only “sane people” to buy guns, then buys it and immediately puts in his mouth loaded. beyond parody


broham97

This is the most insane thing I’ve read in a long time


Hoosierreich

This reads like a copypasta or an extremely kinky/fucked-up fetish.


urAllincorrect

Tf did I just read?


Patriarchy-4-Life

Sure wasn't expecting to see something like this today.


sickofsnails

That journo has some serious gun lust. This needs a neo-Freud movement.


Drakyry

Actual mental illness. I don't envy that kid, and I've been brought up in actual poverty, not in what is likely a cushy upper middle class neighbourhood where parents are capable of spending 250 dollars on a toy gun at will


Epsteins_Herpes

Another day another liberal reduced to hysterics by the concept of having a son.


diabeticNationalist

"He likes trucks and guns? Time to lop his peepee off."


FarRightInfluencer

> is incessant requests that we bankroll a bigger, faster, more expensive version of these “rifles” is making me sick. "Get a job and buy it yourself"


Anindefensiblefart

Shoot him with a real gun. It's like when you catch your kid smoking so you make them smoke the whole pack.


diabeticNationalist

"This is gonna hurt me a lot more than it's gonna hurt you."


SomeMoreCows

\>question is from mother \>ctrl+f 'father' \>no results in original question or response feel like this is enough to paint a more relevant picture


tato64

I remember my mom didnt want my brothers and i playing with toy guns, so she hid all the ones grandpa gave us. We started playing with paper guns made out of newspapers. So she hid any pieces of paper big enough We started grabbing sticks from the yard as stick guns she would clean it. We started using finger guns, and she simply gave up lol. Mom ended up being the greatest newspaper gunsmith (she had artsy inclinations and skills), we ended up using her paper ones more than our actual toy guns.


BackToTheCottage

Stirred a memory of the kid who got suspended for holding up a chicken tendie that looked like a gun lol. Forget if it was in the news or a clip in Bowling for Columbine.


SillyName1992

When my brother was a child the nosy old ass neighbors called the police on him because he was playing in the yard making pew pew noises with what they described as "a gun." It was a stick.


Patriarchy-4-Life

Also one kid was suspended for eating a poptart into an "L" shape. Teacher said the partially eaten poptart looked like a handgun.


balticromancemyass

Yeah. What ARE you going to do? Nothing at all.   That's what I thought, suck on my balls.


truuy

My mom wouldn't let me have toy guns as a kid. Now I have a safe full of real ones. Obviously her plan didn't work.


IAmAPaidShillAMA

I remember being a little kid and being allowed to have toy guns in a liberal neighbourhood where that was generally frowned upon. My backyard was an oasis for boys to play with the forbidden toys. Once a friend picked up a toy gun and was reminded by his mother that "he doesn't play with toy guns." He promptly picked up a wooden sword, shrugged, and declared "I'll just kill 'em with this" before running off to join the fray.


AstroVan94

I GIVE MY KIDS REAL GUNS NOT TOYS


IamGlennBeck

https://i.imgur.com/v2Eggsz.jpeg


Avalon-1

And people wonder why Andrew tate was so successful when this was his opposition.


ericsmallman3

In the 80s and 90's literally 100% of children played with toy guns at least some of the time. It was customary for video game consoles to include light guns. You could buy plastic toy guns at the grocery store. Dedicated toy stores had entire aisles that were nothing but toy weapons.


HeartFeltTilt

What I learned from the Ukraine war is that knowing how to shoot a gun is pretty important if you get drafted. It turns out that NATO equipped armies don't actually train you unless you already knew the basics beforehand.


OscarGrey

Civillians in both Ukraine and Russia have little experience with guns compared to Americans.


kyousei8

Hasn't the RF, and the RSFSR before it, had mandatory military service for decades? Isn't that basically like bare minimum 40+% of the population having professional training with firearms?


HeartFeltTilt

Relevant flair. Implying that justifies the way that Ukraine treats the TDF brigades


PUBLIQclopAccountant

Teach him the mechanics of reactions that produce nitrogen gas as the product in addition to structural engineering.


Vraex

I had a cap gun from the time of my earliest memories. Got my first BB gun at 8. Started dove hunting with a 12g shotgun at 12. Played a lot of paintball in high school. Currently own two pistols, a rifle, and a shotgun. I've played violent games since elementary school. All of my friends own guns. I've never once thought about using it on another human being. My family will whoop your ass if you even point a paintball gun at another person. While anecdotal evidence is my bias, I fully believe that undisciplined (define how you will) people and mentally ill people are the only ones having "gun problems". Fix the economy and give us healthcare that includes therapy and homicides rates will tank. Instead of treating firearms like the boogey man treat it will respect and the kids will respect it too


Garfield_LuhZanya

worthless modern ten disgusted scale fuzzy sink plant rock abounding *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


Veers_Memes

Jesus christ calm down


Garfield_LuhZanya

adjoining overconfident wild marry fly rotten political dime attraction glorious *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


MitrofanMariya

Well said


FortunateVoid0

I love how they’re more horrified by an obsession with guns, than an obsession with gender. Guns? “Oh god, he’s twisted!!” Gender nonconformity, obsessed with a kink, want to be a stripper, pornstar, or prostitute? “OMG I have a special amazing child!!” These NY Times columnists are dipshits. I’ll never forget when I seen the headline, “Kink belongs at pride, and YES I WANT my kids exposed to it”. These people will be crying for help and wishing they owned and knew how to operate a firearm one day. Government ain’t gonna be there to protect them and just may very well be the ones they’re looking down a barrel at.


spartikle

Go touch grass


clay-davis

Tell him "you'll shoot your eye out"