Guns Guns Guns
Recent stories have focused on the left-leaning group Code Pink's protest of gun and war toys this Christmas season. Their suggestions range from putting surgeon general-type warning labels on such toys in stores to buying such toys then staging loud verbal protests in the return line about what a horrible thing they are to the employees of the company selling them.
Barring that this whole protest campaign borders on the infantile in behavior and barring that placing such labels on others' property is vandalism at best, anyone who purposely makes a return line longer than it should be by staging a ridiculous protest on the ills of war toys should be shot. Having stood in such lines around Christmas-time, I believe I can vouch for others in those lines that they will feel likewise. I didn't expect to have to go armed to Target or Wal-Mart this year to do returns, but it is the burden we bear to live in such times.
Yes, that's a joke...mostly. Save the hate mail. I hate to be the voice of practicality in such issues, but how is this going to advance their agenda? Do they think a few stickers or a loud shouting match or two will miraculously awaken parents out of some imagined slumber that guns are bad, ok?
War toys and toy guns and the like have been around a lot longer than any of us or even our grand parents. They are toys like any other, though they may sometimes represent darker parts of our culture (in the case of war). They are a natural outlet for creativity and play just as a puzzle or a Barbie Dream House is. They are neither good nor evil. They are toys.
Without barely knowing what a war was or a gun was for that matter, I and the kids in my neighborhood scrambled for Army men, WWII mountain playsets, Navy warship toys, cap guns and "spark" guns (remember the ones that looked like Thompson SMG's with a red plastic top over the barrel that showed the spark when you pulled the trigger?). Our frame of reference was at best Looney Toons or old WWII John Wayne movies. They were a natural outlet for us as boys and even some of the neighborhood girls. To the best of my knowledge, owning such toys did not raise us to be homocidal maniacs or depraved criminals. Nor did it do that for our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents. Kids today I see, especially those whose parents try to insulate them from guns, violence, and war, make guns from their fingers and shoot each other with these imaginary weapons. So, given that such reasoning is ludicrous, that toys like that caused violent behavior in kids or when they became adults, why hate them so?
Such groups as Code Pink have the neutering of our society as their primary agenda. They have their own opinions on how to raise our children and direct our society through "conflict resolution" therapies and anger management courses and other such psycho babble. Such people feel that if we all just had a coke and a smile we'd stop being so violent and the rest of the world would love us and/or follow suit. The world doesn't work that way. It never did. Humanity doesn't work that way. It's a noble aspiration, but one that is doomed by the reality of our existence, that there is still war and barbarity in this world and that it appears to be as natural to the human race as breathing. It started when the first man (or proto-man if you want to go there) picked up the first rock and bashed the first poor sod over the head who disagreed with him or her and it won't end until we're a lot different of a species than we are now.
Will banning war toys and vilifying guns take care of this or even help it? No. I've seen the attempts and I've seen them fail. They seem less to me attempts to make kids less violent as they do to shape society in the image of a few power-craving loons. Power flows out of more than just a barrel of a gun, as old Chairman Mao probably knew. It flows also from taking those guns away, and their like. Start with the toys, shape the culture, and soon you're as described by Dennis Leary in Demolition Man. A 37 year old virgin in his teddy-bear pajamas drinking a broccoli shake and singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer wiener".
Recent stories have focused on the left-leaning group Code Pink's protest of gun and war toys this Christmas season. Their suggestions range from putting surgeon general-type warning labels on such toys in stores to buying such toys then staging loud verbal protests in the return line about what a horrible thing they are to the employees of the company selling them.
Barring that this whole protest campaign borders on the infantile in behavior and barring that placing such labels on others' property is vandalism at best, anyone who purposely makes a return line longer than it should be by staging a ridiculous protest on the ills of war toys should be shot. Having stood in such lines around Christmas-time, I believe I can vouch for others in those lines that they will feel likewise. I didn't expect to have to go armed to Target or Wal-Mart this year to do returns, but it is the burden we bear to live in such times.
Yes, that's a joke...mostly. Save the hate mail. I hate to be the voice of practicality in such issues, but how is this going to advance their agenda? Do they think a few stickers or a loud shouting match or two will miraculously awaken parents out of some imagined slumber that guns are bad, ok?
War toys and toy guns and the like have been around a lot longer than any of us or even our grand parents. They are toys like any other, though they may sometimes represent darker parts of our culture (in the case of war). They are a natural outlet for creativity and play just as a puzzle or a Barbie Dream House is. They are neither good nor evil. They are toys.
Without barely knowing what a war was or a gun was for that matter, I and the kids in my neighborhood scrambled for Army men, WWII mountain playsets, Navy warship toys, cap guns and "spark" guns (remember the ones that looked like Thompson SMG's with a red plastic top over the barrel that showed the spark when you pulled the trigger?). Our frame of reference was at best Looney Toons or old WWII John Wayne movies. They were a natural outlet for us as boys and even some of the neighborhood girls. To the best of my knowledge, owning such toys did not raise us to be homocidal maniacs or depraved criminals. Nor did it do that for our parents, grandparents, or great grandparents. Kids today I see, especially those whose parents try to insulate them from guns, violence, and war, make guns from their fingers and shoot each other with these imaginary weapons. So, given that such reasoning is ludicrous, that toys like that caused violent behavior in kids or when they became adults, why hate them so?
Such groups as Code Pink have the neutering of our society as their primary agenda. They have their own opinions on how to raise our children and direct our society through "conflict resolution" therapies and anger management courses and other such psycho babble. Such people feel that if we all just had a coke and a smile we'd stop being so violent and the rest of the world would love us and/or follow suit. The world doesn't work that way. It never did. Humanity doesn't work that way. It's a noble aspiration, but one that is doomed by the reality of our existence, that there is still war and barbarity in this world and that it appears to be as natural to the human race as breathing. It started when the first man (or proto-man if you want to go there) picked up the first rock and bashed the first poor sod over the head who disagreed with him or her and it won't end until we're a lot different of a species than we are now.
Will banning war toys and vilifying guns take care of this or even help it? No. I've seen the attempts and I've seen them fail. They seem less to me attempts to make kids less violent as they do to shape society in the image of a few power-craving loons. Power flows out of more than just a barrel of a gun, as old Chairman Mao probably knew. It flows also from taking those guns away, and their like. Start with the toys, shape the culture, and soon you're as described by Dennis Leary in Demolition Man. A 37 year old virgin in his teddy-bear pajamas drinking a broccoli shake and singing "I'm an Oscar Meyer wiener".
posted by Rob Beck | 6:15 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home