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Christmas plea to Santa
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More from OpinionDear Santa,
I have a very special wish for the holidays. I ask that you please consider not giving Airsoft handguns to children this year.
You see, Santa, many of these guns are nearly exact replicas of real handguns in both appearance and feel, even if they do fire cute little colored "pellets" instead of real bullets. I know you understand handguns aren't toys and that they are lethal, hand-held machines made solely to kill another human. So why would you put a pellet-firing replica into the hands of a child as if it were a toy?
I know, I know. I might be a bit more sensitive to this kind of thing than you or the elves. But it just seems too horribly logical that, as children become desensitized from the deadly reality/awareness of what a handgun is by playing with one, it may make it that much easier for them to pick up and "play" with a real gun, being involved in a situation that could escalate horribly as the pellet gun might be mistaken as real, or may help make for an easy transition to a real handgun as the child becomes older.
I understand there is a place for safe, responsible and accountable gun ownership, Santa, but I ask that you think about whether the messages these particular "gifts" send our children are any of those things.
Thanks for the consideration and I wish you a safe, magical and beautiful holiday season.
— Tim Heyne, of Thousand Oaks, is a member of the local chapter of the Brady Campaign. In 2005, Heyne's wife, best friend and a Santa Rosa Valley woman were killed in a shooting spree. Heyne sustained gunshot wounds in the incident. The shooter killed himself.
Posted by sslocal on December 6, 2007 at 9:50 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Tripe. Anything coming from the Brady Campaign is suspect.
"The society of the late 20th century America is perhaps the first in human history where most grown men do not routinely bear arms on their persons, and boys are not regularly raised from childhood to learn skill in the use of some kind of weapon, either for community or personal defense. Ours also happens to be one of the rudest and crudest societies in history, having jubilantly swept most of the etiquette of speech, table, dress, hospitality, regard for fairness, deference to authority, and the relations of male and female and child and elder under the fraying and filthy carpet of politically convenient illusions. With little fear of physical reprisal, Americans can be as loud, gross, disrespectful, pushy, and negligent as they please. If more people carried rapiers at their belts or revolvers on their hips it is a fair bet that you would be able to go to a movie and enjoy the dialogue from the screen without having to endure the small talk, family gossip, and assorted bodily noises that many theater audiences these days regularly emit."
Samuel Francis, in "Chronicles"
Posted by venturapagan on December 6, 2007 at 3:35 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I agree, sslocal. I grew up with guns in the house, and my brother had toy guns; not only were we taught by our parents that playing with real guns was dangerous and should be supervised by them (at that age), but we also were smart enough to know the difference between real ones (locked up) and toys. It never crossed our minds to play with the real ones. The lack of parenting on the subject, plus irresponsible ppl not locking them up, is most often the reason for children getting hurt or hurting others. I am female, an avid target shooter, and a life-member of the NRA, and I live on a not-so-safe street with cops who don't respond to calls. I don't want to shoot anyone, but I WILL defend myself if someone breaks in and points a gun at me. If you don't want to live in a country with these RIGHTS as a US citizen, move to Australia or Britain, where only the criminals have guns....
Posted by venturapagan on December 6, 2007 at 3:43 p.m. (Suggest removal)
And I'm not unsympathetic to what happened to you. Somehow I doubt the gun he got was legally obtained....
Posted by rw93003 on December 23, 2007 at 4:14 p.m. (Suggest removal)
When I was a kid (more than 40 years ago) Santa brought toy guns to all the boys I knew. The Mattel Shootin Shell was the most requested. When we got a little older (not much) we found BB guns under the tree. No one I knew grew up to be negatively affected from that experience. Sorry to be politically incorrect but I think the "Chicken Little sky-is-falling" attitude of some these days is much more harmful to the kids than the silly things the Chicken Littles are so much against.
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