I was just on my way here with the links. If I’m gonna have a toy gun, I’m gonna have a Snake Plissken Jr toy.
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I never had one of those, but one of my friends did. It was awesome.
Curiously, a few years later, I had a Physics teacher Mr Severn, who was of course universally known as Johnny*
*Not to his face.
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There was some kind of Hot Wheels style loop de loop toy back in the 70s that launched the cars with alarming velocity round the track from a spring-loaded bolt action rifle attached to one end of it. Needless to say, we never usually constructed any track, we just shot each other with it.
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The plastic was sturdier then, but degraded since.
Both of you are right.
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Where to begin with this parade of straw men?
Did you know that arming children is not the only solution to ignorance? My son has never held a gun, and he probably wouldn’t know what a firing pin is. This does not mean he thinks they are toys, and it does not make him more likely to shoot up his school. Less, actually.
Also, did you know that there are many ways to teach teens and older kids responsibility besides arming them? Oddly enough, many European kids are quite mature despite very strict gun laws. You do not need a gun to be a man.
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I remember lusting for the Johnny7, I was 7 at the time. And the MFU gun too. Sadly, I never got either one. Nor did any of my friends. But I had several cap guns and this Thompson:
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Sounds right.
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I was the proud owner of a Johnny-7 back in the day. It was an awesome toy. Though, you did tend to lose some of the small pieces pretty quickly. A friend of mine had the Mattel Tommy gun, and another had the Mattel M-16. We were pretty unstoppable during our frequent neigborhood-wide games of war.
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One of my childhood friends had one of these. I was sooo jealous.
Nope, it was made of plastic.
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FTFY. Or rather, removed your cultural bias and inserted my own.
Maybe. Or maybe it is a symptom of the gradual and continual reduction of the acceptance of violence, war and killing in human culture. Which is a development that I am wholly happy with.
Note: This is not a gun ownership debate. You could advocate total gun control and still take your kids to a museum of firearms to drool over the coolest exhibits. Or you could view firearms and private gun ownership as essential, but also as a necessary evil that should never be glorified.
The question here is whether we/our TV ads should be teaching our kids that war is a cool thing and it’s the greatest goal of a True Hero to fight in a war and win, or if we should be teaching them that war is a terrible thing and that the true hero will find a way to avoid it before it starts.
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It was also featured in an episode of law and order, where Detective “Pyle” Goren is shaking down a pawn shop owner.
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I was going to say the same thing. Very similar to Megatron Gen 1.
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I actually beg for and got that toy when I was a kid.
It was mostly plastic. And I think I lost interest after a while and just played with the pistol portion. The cooler toy gun of the time was the Tommy gun. the cap functionality never really worked right but that was ok because it still went rat a tat tat.
When I got a bit older I became obsessed with the Shwinn bikes that looked like dragsters. Sissy bar, Candy Apple paint job, Small front wheel . My folks got me the knock off Sears version with Butterfly handlebars and a five speed stick.
I was awesome
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I would agree with that. Lately-ish(a decade or so?) children who have been raised under the “keep them kids as long as possible” mentality are now adults who are being, and on some level think they should be, infantalized.
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Show me where I advocated “arming children?” I said they lack responsible exposure. I never said they should be armed.
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I use guns occasionally. I rarely kill anything with them.
At no time in this thread have I advocated gun ownership, gun proliferation, arming children, or using firearms to kill anything.
I’m pretty sure I’ve advocated responsible exposure(education).
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I think the big difference in safety is that nobody gets the idea to toss regular darts over a house into an unseen yard.
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There’s an old, not-very-good first person shooter known as ZPC, in which your weapon is in fact known as the Johnny Seven and is capable of firing a diverse variety of ammunition. I never knew it was based on something else. (It does make a little more sense than the space marine walking around with seven different guns in hammerspace.)
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I had that one!
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@Boundgear:
No, what he’s saying is that lack of education relating to firearms and the lack of receiving consequences for improper actions is resulting in kids who don’t “get” it.
See here: Strict Gun Laws in Japan Scare the Yakuza -The Firearm Blog
Where the author says:
I was studying Japanese. I volunteered for a program to assist Japanese foreign exchange students. My job was to help facilitate their exposure to American Culture. Part of that was taking them places to experience American Culture. I took them to a local indoor pistol range. The first two guys rented revolvers. One of them immediately picked it up and pointed it at the other and asked him to take his picture. I immediately grabbed the barrel and pushed it down to the ground.
Kindness is raising children to understand the ramifications of their actions in a loving manner–that actions have short, medium and long term consequences. This is both kindness to the children and kindness to the people who have to live around them.
The communities that are currently experiencing the highest levels of gun violence do not have extensive involvement in the shooting sports (Hunting, trap and skeet and the various rifle and pistol disciplines), and the fathers aren’t passing the traditions of gun safety and safe firearm handling (And yes, this is a somewhat sexist remark, but it’s almost always passed down from older male to children. These days there are more women getting involved in the shooting sports–which is awesome–and maybe in the future it’ll be moms and dads passing it on to girls and boys, but that is then, this is now).
Additionally what we’ve seen since that ad was contemporary is the rise of the anti-hero, and the cultural denigration of authority figures. Helped (one must admit) by those very same authority figures being corrupt and vicious.
Society has complex and non-linear causality, so blaming any one event or trend is likely to be incorrect.
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