Opinions on Toy Water Guns

Yes to water & toy guns, and swords. They can't hit each other with the plastic and wooden swords, but they can shoot each other with water and Nerf darts.

Yes, my children play with water guns, toy guns, swords anything like that. I also teach them right from wrong.

Yes, toy water guns are really fun.

I'm okay with toy guns as long as they look like toys -- brightly colored with the appearance of a fun toy, not mimicking real guns.

Super Soakers are standard summer weaponry in our household. My girls arm themselves to the teeth and have all-out warfare in the back yard. We don't have any swords, but they're both quite proficient with large sticks.

Yes we let our kids play with water guns and other toy guns. They also play with swords.

Our rule is you can only shoot water at a person that has a water gun as well. We have a pool so that is why we came up with this rule. Just no fun to lounge in a pool and be pummeled by streams of water when you are in no way looking for an all out water war.

I don't buy into the hype that playing with water guns or playing cops and robbers is what is causing all the gun violence. Let's work on the mental health of our children and society. Let's work on strengthening families...which in turn strengthens society as a whole.

Let's look at the motives of these mentally ill and emotionally distraught offenders. It is not because they played with colorful water guns on a hot sunny afternoon during summer time. Their mental issues go waaay deeper than that. I think we are totally missing the boat when it comes to these violent shootings. But that is another post entirely.

Of course my kids can play with water guns and toy guns. My son is having his 7th birthday party in a few weeks and we are having a squirt gun fight in the back yard along with water balloons and a slip n slide.

Yes, I allow all toy weapons. Children have been playing war, police, army, SWAT, knights, etc., since time immemorial. It's up to parents and other mentors to ensure that they grasp the difference between what is real and what is play. If you can teach your child the difference between a chef's knife and a butter knife, you can teach your child the difference between a dangerous weapon and a Super Soaker.

yes, they played with pretend weapons, and pretend horses, and pretend castles and tractors and monster trucks and dragons.
i don't get raising kids in a society riddled with weaponry and then insisting to them that they are not allowed to try and figure out why and how. play is how kids make sense of their world.
and i don't know many boys that won't shoot things no matter how many toys are forbidden them. most of them have fists with pointer fingers, right?
khairete
S.

I'm not a gun person, but I played with all sorts of toy guns. At first, I didn't want toy guns for our kids, but a friend got a nerf gun for my son's birthday one year. The flood gate was opened. He loves all sorts of guns. As my husband pointed out, boys will make guns out of pencils, paper clips, bananas, anything they can get their hands on. I don't see a correlation between toy guns and real.

Sure, and so do all of the adults. We have had massive water gun fights with the whole family and neighborhood families. , even adults against children!

Our kids are pretty pacifist.. And they are all extremely bright and know the difference in toys versus actual weapons.

Yep... I grew up with toy guns, and guns in the house, as did my husband.

We don't feel that banning a toy will make it any less attractive. Kids will create a "gun" out of anything, including their fingers and a poptart!

Education and monitoring are the key, as are keeping weapons secured properly.

YES to all the above, except zero weapon policy. Plus my kids (7, 8, 10) all shoot bow & arrow, cross bows, bb guns, airsoft guns, build real guns, take pocket knives to the forest, you name it we use it....

Banning guns just makes a child more curios. We teach safety and respect. Even though I personally am afraid of real guns, it's my job to teach my kids about them.

Here in Georgia, guns are a way of life.

What's wrong with squirt guns? I have four boys. It's in their genes! Like with anything there are rules. No head shots. No crotch shots.

Tyler retired from the USAF. He has several deployed tours overseas. We have taught our boys to respect the tools and not to touch. Education is key.

S.

My kids get real and fake so I have never restricted them. Really they only ever wanted nerf stuff and super soakers.

My ex was raised by a very anti gun mom and because of that is obsessed with guns. Problem is as an adult he thought it was more mature to buy real guns yet play with them. I would offer him up as the most unsafe gun owner in the world! All of this because his stupid mom wouldn't let him have a damn cap gun like every other kid!

I think like everything it is being reasonable, rational, and pay attention to how your kids play. If you kid seems a bit obsessed, doesn't seem to be able to get real vs fake, things you should be concerned with, then yes, probably a good idea to take the toys away. Normal kids, let them squirt their friends and have fun.

Yes to all. However, my 11 yo son isn't allowed to play any life-like shooting games.

IME, even kids brought up with a "no weapons" policy at home will usually end up using a stick, or a spoon, or ANYTHING like a gun.
Yes, mine likes Nerf guns, super soakers and air soft.

We live in a gun culture.
It's why I feel that the owners/parents of kids injured or killed with guns left unsecured should be criminally prosecuted.

I did. I chose not to buy them toy guns, but they made imaginary guns out of sticks and drinking straws, and I didn't object to that. Their "violence" was as imaginary as their weapons. In the summer, they liked to do target practice with squirt guns. Sometimes the target was one another (yes, they were corrected), but they didn't do it with meanness, and it didn't cause them to use real weapons on each other (though, with two boys and two girls, there may have been thoughts!).

My boys enjoy water guns, Nerf guns and Nerf swords.

Lol. My 4 yo daughter has a super soaker and a nerf gun... So she dis definitely allowed to play with them.

Of course,we have a close friend who is a cop, so we often use his gun to show her the difference, as well as to teach her appropriate firearm safety. (Which, at this point is simply do not touch ANY gun, even if she thinks it is a toy, unless she has been given permission; also to tell an adult if she sees one.)

As far as swords... She doesn't have a toy sword, but she has play golf clubs that she pretends are swords. Lol.

Yes.
Yes.

I have 2 kids. Boy and Girl.
We have water guns, we have toy guns and swords and other things.
2 people in my family also know martial arts. So even a person without "weapons" can fight.
But fighting is not the point.
Playing with "weapons" does not make a person violent or not.
I grew up with those things too.

Am as anti-gun in real life as it gets.

But yes my kids are welcome to play with any type of toy gun they want.

I see no link whatsoever between kids playing with toy guns and real violence later on or even gun affinity. I played with all types of guns as a child and I've never owned a real gun and would certainly never want to shoot a person or animal.

All toy weapons are welcome in our home.

Yes, but no shooting people in the face. Water shots in the eyes hurt.

:P

Any other toy gun, they are not allowed to aim at heads/faces or the dog (at all).
We don't play swords... son has 2 real ones.
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FWIW, my son, when he was 3, made a gun out of both a stick and a straw (drinking straw) before we ever bought him any kind of guy (water, pop, or otherwise).

Yes, water guns, nerf guns, archery sets, play swords are all fine at our house. I started out banning them, but realized at about age 6 for my son that every birthday present was a nerf gun and I should lighten up. Real guns in the house, no way.

I had hoped to avoid the whole gun thing, and I did with my first, a girl. But my 4 year old boy and a friend of his play guns with their fingers! I guess I'd have no problem with water guns. Other guns? I'm not going to be buying any, but he doesn't need any, he has his finger!

Zero weapon policy in our home, but I only stop my children from playing with them at friends' houses of they're play fighting, hitting, or pretending to shoot people. When they are older (my oldest is only 5), we may allow water "blasters" that don't look like guns and possibly Nerf stuff, when they're old enough to really understand the difference between tagging someone with a dart and shooting them with a gun.

Yes, my daughter played with water guns, and cap pistols, plastic swords, bows and arrows, and even light sabers.
She also learned how to handle real weapons safely when she was old enough to understand.

We have more toy weapons in my house then I care to count. My son and his friends entertain themselves for hours. It is innocent fun. It is not going to turn your child into a gun wielding crazy person. He does not see them as weapons they are just toys.

We do as our guests or host family do. If they are cool with what I loosely term "weapon play", then yes, the toy stuff can come out. If they aren't (some families have strong feelings and I'm trying to teach my son at seven that we CAN be flexible and respectful of other families feelings around this), then we keep that stuff put away and Kiddo is told why.

I should also mention that I have girlfriends with much younger children who come to play who aren't ready for their kids to go down that path yet. It's definitely not a hill to die on for me either way. And the rules with weapons of course: you don't point it at someone or it goes away.

For what it's worth, though, my son and his buddies have figured out that squirt bottles are far superior in range and for 'ammunition storage'.. you don't have to fill a big spray bottle nearly as often-- and they can take the tops off quickly and soak each other just throwing water at each other. Sometimes, attractiveness is in the functionality and less in the actual shape (gun, animal, etc) of the squirting device.

Kids that have no experience with guns, toys or otherwise, are the ones most at risk for shooting or getting shot accidentally by a real gun. They are not educated about real guns and even though the parent thinks this is the right way chances are if that child comes in contact with a gun anywhere they are going to think it's okay to pick it up.

Education is best, teaching a child about real guns is best.

When I was a kid we have pop guns. The kind you put strips of dots into them and when you pulled the trigger the powder in the dot exploded and it "popped" loudly.

I never shot anyone is real life. We had rifles in our home. I was never ever allowed to touch those guns. I was taught that if I ever saw anything that wasn't mine and it looked like a gun I was to get my parents.

As an adult I don't let the kids play guns that resemble real life guns. A grip, a barrel, a trigger, etc.... I just choose to not buy them. If the kids play with stuff like that at other houses it's no big deal to me. I just figure that it's not a toy they need.

If my kids had swords that were actually shaped and shiny and edged, even though not sharpened, I would not let them play with those, they could leave bruises.

Water guns and other toys similar aren't really like real guns. They don't have a chamber for bullets, clips of bullets or bullet shaped items, and they don't have holes at the end for bullets to come out. They have a small hole for water to squirt out of.

Now Nerf Guns are a bit different. We have all sorts of Nerf stuff. In the house, outside, both fun venues for family activities.

I imagine if a parent was really strong in their beliefs that all weapons were bad then they'd keep their kids from playing laser tag, archery, splash pads with water guns on them, and even toast according to the articles below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/fashion/parents-are-fac...

http://www.parentmap.com/article/weapons-ban-just-how-bad...

No and no. Zero weapons policy, zero hurting policy. My daughter has an amazing imagination and will play super hero without hurting or weapons. She plays fairy, wizard, zombie all without a device used to cause harm. She puts "spells" on her imaginary captors. As for water guns, we use spray bottles for squirting which she's always liked because of the quantity of water the bottle can hold and the nozzle spray options. She's never asked for toy weapons or water guns because we've always helped her think up plenty of alternative ways to play and I think it's just kind of stuck with her. She's 10 now and still really into imaginative play.