My husband and I are very 'aware' of guns. We are both former military, and so we feel a strong sense of responsibility to teach our son that Guns Are Not Toys.
Our son is four and interested in 'guns', but he still doesn't understand them. We bought him a 'squirt gun', and made sure it was in an animal shape for both his own safety and because we will not give him a gun-shaped toy to play with.
Reading a segment of Bruno Bettelheim's "A Good Enough Parent" taught me that he *is* going to have times in his life when it's important for him to play in this more aggressive sort of way, to channel his feelings. We feel more comfortable with encouraging knight/dragon play than we do just shoot'em up bang bang play, and will likely get him a wooden sword to 'battle the dragon' with.
I think guns only have one way to play: shooting. There's nothing else to do with them. I realize the same could be said for swords. However, there's something less immediate about a sword. Kids also understand getting a cut, because that's happened to them before at some point in their lives. Getting shot? Not even relatable.
Lastly, a former boyfriend of mine was a police officer. He ended up asking a mentally ill person to drop their weapon repeatedly, and when the person aimed the weapon at him, he shot the suspect and killed them. Toy gun.
So, for me it's not a question of 'we all turned out okay' (we say that, because we are alive, right? the dead do not protest posts like this, and those children who have shot siblings or other youngsters, thinking it was okay to play with guns and then stumbling onto their parent's real weapon...sad), it's simply a matter of awareness. The world has changed. I used to play cap-guns too. I've just become very aware that in a world where police DO shoot people with toy guns and where more parents don't use more discretion in 'what kind' of gun play happens, we've decided to try to focus our son in a different direction. Frankly, some of the pretend play I see with older kids and guns does tend to "sound" more mean and certainly more violent than the way my siblings and I played with toy guns. A small six-shooter with a roll of caps is vastly different, in my opinion, from a semi-automatic with pretend bandoliers of ammo. Western shoot-out get-the-bad-guy is one thing.(and we were only given caps on camping trips, by the way.) Massive "mow them down" Rambo style because EVERYONE is the bad guy is quite another game. I see the looks on some children's faces when they play this way and they look quite mean. This isn't what I want for my child. He's still a child.