We're the only ones overreacting to toy guns

How did we, as a society, get to this point?

Two boys playing with a toy rifle touched off lockdowns yesterday at Stone Ranch Elementary School and the 4S Ranch Boys & Girls Club.

The scare began at 12:37 p.m. when police received a call that two juveniles were shooting from the elementary school, on 4S Ranch Parkway, at people in a nearby park.

San Diego police officers, sheriff’s deputies and California Highway Patrol officers swarmed the scene and surrounded the boys.

O Noes! Kids playing with guns, call the cops!

When authorities determined that the gun was an Airsoft rifle used in a combat-simulation game, they let the boys go, a sheriff’s sergeant said.

I played with toy guns all the time when I was a kid. Some of them were very realistic.

No one ever called the police when we were playing cops and robbers or war games. People would have laughed at the idea.

Where did we get the meme that if a kid is playing with a gun it’s likely enough to be real that we call the police. In reality it’s extremely unlikely that the gun junior is playing with is real.

The police, when called, show up with enough officers that it’s called a swarm?

Overkill anyone?

At least they didn’t confiscate their toys and take the kids to jail.

The thing is, more kids aren’t dying from firearms. I looked up the data on the CDC website, and injuries from firearms among ages 0 to 12 have fallen in real numbers since 1981 when the online data starts.

(I stopped at 12, because teenagers don’t play cops and robbers.)

So there’s even less of a reason to think that they gun junior is playing with is real.

So why the PSH over kids playing with toy guns?

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0 Responses to We're the only ones overreacting to toy guns

  1. Spaz says:

    I love living in 4S Ranch… But there seems to be more money than brains. Most people proabably need to hire a service to have their a$$es wiped.