My Boys Like Shootouts. What's Wrong With That?
Jonathan Turley at The Washington Post - Boys will be boys, unless their parents are deathly afraid of even the idea of guns. [scopeny]
My 4-year-old son, Aidan, brought his orange Buzz Lightyear plastic ray gun to "the pit," as our neighborhood playground is known. As he began pursuing an evildoer -- his 6-year-old brother, Jack -- around the playground, a mother froze with an expression of utter revulsion. Glaring alternately from Aidan to me, she waited for a few minutes before grabbing her son and proclaiming loudly that he could not play there "if that boy is going to be allowed to play with guns."
While such "zero-tolerance" parents still seem to be a minority, this is a scene that seems to be repeating itself with increasing regularity. To these parents, my wife and I are "gun-tolerant" and therefore corruptors of children who should be avoided. Not only are such toys viewed as encouraging aggressive behavior and violent attitudes, they are also seen as reinforcing gender stereotypes, with boys playing with guns or swords and girls playing with dolls or cooking sets.
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Yet another reason to read
Yet another reason to read blogs instead of mainstream media: 99% of the time, this type of story in newspapers and magazines frustrates and pisses me off because all you get is the beginning where a dumbass wanna-be tyrant says something stupid, then a bunch of blah blah blah about "both sides of the story", and you almost NEVER get a satisfying conclusion to the story where the writer tells how they politely rebutted the "arguments" and/or tore the dumbass a new hole. Preferably with a ton of witnesses.
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