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ban everything.

Is this vacation over yet? Can I please go back to work?

New York is looking to ban toy guns.

Her voice is impish and feminine, but her gun is menacing. "Give me your money," she says through a ski mask to a bank teller in New Jersey. The teller hands over $3,050, and the robber and another female speed off in a getaway car.

But this wasn't exactly a Thelma & Louise duo. These robbers were 14-year-old twin girls who held up a bank with a toy air-pellet gun this fall.

Toy gun or not, they were still holding up a bank. Shall we ban ski masks, too?

And in New York, the site of many toy-gun fatalities, City Council members have introduced a bill to ban the sale of all toy guns - a ban that has not yet passed anywhere in the US. If the bill is approved, officials think it could help blaze the trail for the state, as well as cities nationwide.

"We recognize that you can't pull all guns off the streets: If people have a criminal mind, they'll make a gun out of a stick," says Bill Wren, deputy chief of staff for Brooklyn Councilman Al Vann, who coauthored the bill. "But the bill is about how [a toy gun] makes people feel. If I feel threatened, I'm threatened."

Yes, if people have a criminal mind they will make a gun out of a stick. So shall we ban....sticks?

How does a toy gun make one feel? I rarely feel threaten when my son has his phasers set to stun. In fact, I feel silly, in a good sort of way.

I don't feel threatened when we are running through the backyard on a hot summer day, chasing each other with supersoakers.

If I feel threatened, I'm threatened. Sometimes it's all in your head, babe. If you take every instance of a kid pointing a toy gun at you as threatening, you have issues I cannot help you with.

"Giving our kids toy guns and then telling them to stay away from the real thing sends a mixed message," says Farideh Kioumehr, founder of the Anti- Violence Campaign in Sherman Oaks, Calif.

Alrighty then. I should probably take those knives out of the kids' craft sets. Baseball bats? Weapons. Light Sabers? Weapons. What? You don't think someone would hold up a bank by saying We are not the robbers you are looking for. Put all the money in the bag?

Hey, I have a grand idea! How about we raise our children right? How about we put gun education in the hands of the parents? What a novel idea. We let the parents tell their kids that using a toy gun in the face of a cop probably isn't a good idea, or that robbing a bank using a water gun is the same thing as robbing a bank using a real gun.

Oh, what's that? We shouldn't be letting our kids rob banks? Well, there is the real root cause then!

See, my son isn't going to go out and point a toy gun at a cop or use a toy gun to hold up some little old lady because, well...that's just not how it works around here. But I suppose that when someone does go out and purchase a plastic rifle and then take it out as he is running from a cop for some other reason, we just have to blame the toy manufacturer instead of the kid or the parent of the kid. It's the American way, by god!

Christopher Industrious of Manhattan, who was shopping in Times Square, would support the new ban. "Kids are imitating whatever they see in the movies and on TV," he says, motioning to his 3-year-old son. He says that one time when disciplined, his son "pointed his water gun at me."

Ok, if that's a problem for you, perhaps your son, at 3, should not be watching shows where they are pointing guns at each other. Isn't a three year old supposed to be watching The Wiggles? Do they use guns?

For Maurice Davis, a salesman at Toys "R" Us, his unfortunate childhood encounters with both real and toy guns are seared on his memory. Growing up in Brooklyn, Mr. Davis was forbidden to play with toy guns. But when he was 11, a playmate pointed a toy gun at a police car. The cops mistook the toy for a real weapon, and sprinted toward them, brandishing guns. "I told my friend, 'Just drop the gun!' " says Davis.

Now, standing next to a shelf of oversize paint guns, Davis says, "If they're gonna ban some, they might as well ban them all.

Hey, Maurice? I have a news flash for you. Your friend was an idiot. Too bad we can't just ban idiocy, eh?

Unfortunately, it has become commonplace to try to legislate instead of parent, or allow people to make informed choices. You don't want your kid to have a toy gun? THEN DON"T BUY HIM ONE! But don't you dare tell me that because you are a lazy parent and your kid does not have the brains to know that pointing a toy gun at a cop is a bad idea, that I can't have my super soaker.

Ban smoking, ban guns, ban fatty foods from cafeterias, ban peanuts from classrooms, ban alcohol and consensual sex between adults, ban violent movies and violent video games and scary music. Ban it all.

Apparently, if one person is not smart enough to make their own choices, none of us are.

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Comments

I "thougt" toy guns were supposed to have a BIG RED TIP, so that you could tell that they were toy guns.

An NYPD undercover killed a guy yesterday who was holding a toy gun to his partner's head. One shot, to the head.

And the ban wouldn't affect the pellet gun (probably illegal in the City anyway) nor the paintball guns (many of which look deadlier than real "army" guns).

NY has just gone to hell since I left. They elect Hillary, then they ban smoking (don't even get me started on the myth of secondhand smoke), now toys guns. They've been trying to take my paintball gun for years. If only human induced global warming were true, then at least I could hope that Manhattan would submerge and maybe save the rest of the state.

I'm not into smoking bans. I'm crap at smoking, but a blanket ban seems somewhat like a breach of property rights to me.

As for Gun Control, Britain's new legislation would probably start riots in most states. Except maybe California, where odd legislation is seemingly more acceptable...

the idea of tougher sentencing was backed by Gleen Reid, of the Mothers Against Guns group.

She suggested people carrying guns should be jailed for 10 years, or for life if they fired them.

So just firing a gun should invoke the same punishment as actually killing someone? Why not just give EVERYONE life sentences regardless of the crime, and then we wont have to worry about that pesky judicial discrimination thing at all anymore. Wow, timesaver...

How low can you go? As if banning books isn't bad enough, now anything that can make kids creative has to be banned. Original thoughts bad, resistance is futile!

Blech.

As to the bank robbery and banning ski masks, in many jurisdictions it is already illegal to walk down the street wearing a mask, with exceptions for Halloween and such presumably innocent occasions. These laws have been around for years.

Yo, Dragon; trust me: Manhattan is sinking, but I don't expect it to save the rest of the state. I live way upstate, and I am a statute felon simply by virtue of the 92FS that sits prettily on my desk as I write this, and which will never, ever, in my life be "registered" or in any other way subject to the disapproval of any bureaubot. That's because it's mine, you see.

But I do not delude myself that they won't give it a damned good go, one way or another.

It's The Endarkenment. I'm tellin' ya. Now & then, I keep hearing from people here & there that we're more free than ever before, and I only wonder what color is is the sky in their world.

Me? I'm just surfin' through history, and tryin' to keep my board waxed.

When I was a kid--and when darned near every kid older than seven had a BB gun--there was one Absolute Rule:
If you point a gun (BB gun, air pistol, .22, or whatever) at a person, even as a joke, you will get your ass whipped so thoroughly that you will not be able to sit down for a month. Your gun will be taken away from you and destroyed. You will not be allowed to have another gun of any kind until you turn 18 and/or leave home.
Believe you me, this Rule worked. In a community where you were considered a sissy if you didn't take the Junior Hunter Safety course so you could get your deer tag at age 15 (instead of age 16), the possibility of losing your gun privileges was a serious thing.

Not that I don't find this whole ban the toys guns thing silly, but perhaps if we did, the outraged relatives of guys shot by the police because they were branding around toy guns as if they were real would shut the hell up.

i was given the same instruction course as Pearl. I was 6, almost 7, when i got my BB gun for Christmas. First gun safety lesson: do not point this gun or any gun at someone unless you intend to shoot them. Pointing a gun at someone is the same as pulling the trigger.
bbguns and pellet guns are not toys
if these kids robbed the bank using a crossbow would we be discussing banning them? Somehow I doubt it. A crossbow would raise a few eyebrows but it doesn't get the knee-jerk emotional reaction that "GUN" does.

And the funny thing was...once we had been instructed on the basics of safe gun handling, we frequently had NO adult supervision while we plinked at rocks, tin cans, cardboard boxes, etc. Yet we were convinced that somehow our parents would know if we even so much as thought about pointing our Daisy air rifles at one another.

I am an avid paintballer and im sick and tired of people trying to ban anything that resembles a gun. The only thing i do with my marker is play paintball. Paintball is the most fun i have ever had and if anyone tries to pass a bill that even ristricts paintball markers many players including me will fight it.

It is our sport and you cant take that away from us.

i wish people will stop banning bb guns ha its just a toy, kids want fun let them have it, or its ok for mps to sit on there ass and give out laws. i say ill always play with bb guns no matter what they say.

ps
just have a heart

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i am only 13 so for me it would be hard to fight these kind of bans but i will anyway the only thing i can say to these kind of people is IF YOU WANT MY PAINTBALL GUN, YOU'LL HAVE TO PRY IT FROM MY COLD DEAD KUNG FU GRIP FINGERS

by the way !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! no fucker will ever get paintball banned if me and my friends are still alive!

Hey Saddam Hussen
(beautiful spelling)
FUCK ME SWINGIN!