District officials said a second-grade student brought the gun in a backpack. On the bus ride home from school, someone told the driver that there was a gun on board.
Twenty-five years ago this would not have been a story. Kids played with toy guns, and they were just that–TOYS! And they were made to look like toys. Every kid had several. We spent hours each and every day outside, and we played two things: “cowboys and Indians” and “cops and robbers.” They both involved a lot of moving and our toy guns. If your toy gun was lost or broken, you used your hand and made your own sound effects. I think we played cops and robbers more than anything. It always involved our bicycles and chasing each other up and down the street. We rode our bikes for miles a day up and down the same quarter of a mile stretch of pavement.
Of course, the funnest of all toy guns was the squirt gun. When I was a kid they were small, looked like some kind of hand gun, and would fit in your pocket. We didn’t have the big soaker guns. Squirt guns were cheap and plastic and didn’t last long. They didn’t hold much water either, so you had to have one in each pocket.
Then, there was the last day of school. We were always excited because it was just that–the last day of school. Within hours we would be free for three months from our teachers, homework, and tests. Free to play our games, fly kites for days on end (yes, I actually did this), and free to wait up late at night for my dad to get home from work so we could watch Streets of San Francisco, Starsky and Hutch, and The Rockford Files together. But what was so fun about the last day of school was the bus ride home. Our bus driver would allow us to bring our squirt guns and have squirt gun fights on the way home. It was a child’s paradise, and she gave us one final squirt as we got off the bus. Oh, the horror!
Not that long ago this headline would’ve read, “Student brings toy gun to school.” However, toys aren’t alarming or frightening, so we must now call it a “fake gun.” And, with today’s political correctness, toy guns are disappearing out of the toy box. What “good” parent would let their child play with such a thing?
Instead, children today hardly spend any time at all outside. Guns are forbidden except for the ones on their electronic games. Children today may not be putting a plastic gun in their hand, but they are viewing very realistic images of people being shot and killed. They are having to deal with the adrenaline rush that comes with the fight or flight response every few minutes. When we played cops and robbers we did a lot of shooting, but hardly anyone got shot. And it was a rare occasion that anyone actually “died.” And, if they did, there was no blood and they were up and running around again in ten seconds or less so we could go on to the next thing. There was no fear, no adrenaline, and no fight or flight response; and we were all better off because of it.
LoriCamper.Com 