When I was a kid, and unfortunately more and more I am beginning to realize that I was indeed one a long time ago, at least chronologically, I played with guns.
Before anyone calls Child Protective Services, they were toy guns. Well, all of them were toys except for the British Sten Gun my father brought home from the war. As with any kid of that era, we played with guns incessantly. My personal favorite: the Marx Tommy Gun with full auto cap firing capability. It was a marvelous weapon, giving the youngest of four boys unparalleled firepower against far more crafty siblings.
When I was not on patrol in the woods backing my house, I could be found patrolling the entrance to our family compound (i.e., our yard) with the Sten Gun. Years later, I assembled this same gun as I sat in the back of Ed Eaton’s Journalism class at Green River Community College, and the following year, committed a coup using said weapon, taking over the college radio station and newspaper as part of the final exam for Ed’s Advanced Journalism class.
I certainly know that’s not possible today. My how times have changed. Today, you can’t even play army with a gun that looks anything like a real gun. Everything has to have bright orange plugs on the tips so that the average Joe can tell it’s not a real gun.
I guess we’re afraid of people these days to the point that we’ve lost all of our sensibilities. I certainly know this is true in the city of Lakewood, Washington. If the city’s name rings a bell, it’s because it was the poster child for the Cops TV series. If you ever saw Pierce County Sheriff written on the side of a cop car on the show, it was in Lakewood.
Well, it seems that Lakewood, which once welcomed the chance to be showcased on any TV show – even Cops – is now anti-gun. Not just anti-gun, but anti-toy gun. First, they refused to renew their contract with Cops because they thought that it hurt the town’s image, as if anything could possibly give it any worse image than it already has.
Now, they have decided that it should be a misdemeanor for any person to have a toy gun. That includes those guns with the bright orange plugs, bright blue and green squirt guns that vaguely resemble real guns and even Nerf guns that resemble toy guns looking like real guns.
In short, I would be in jail if I were a kid today. My Tommy Gun would have landed me in the clink by the time I was five. I’m sure Lakewood’s finest would have taken me down for throwing pine cone grenades over the fence, too. I would be someone’s bitch, a little kid being prime turf in the Lakewood Pokey… or should I say Poke-me.
Have we lost all minds? Yes, I know there are some whackos out there with real weapons. I know it can be a little tough to tell a real gun from a toy one. The argument could even be made that that little gun toting child could one day become one of those whackos because all he did was play with guns when he was a toddler.
I was that toddler. And in Lakewood, I would be a candidate for a misdemeanor charge. All because I played with my toys.
Did I turn out to be one of those gun toting whackos? Nope. To this day, I have never fired a real gun and I have no need, intention or desire to. It simply doesn’t float my boat. There was no transference between loading a toy gun with caps and loading a real gun with bullets.
Sorry. I defy all the psychological and police profiling. I certainly don’t fit Lakewood’s definition of a kid bent on killing, all because he played with toy guns. I am pretty non-violent all around. I would even say totally non-violent, since I’ve never hit a human being that wasn’t a sibling. I’ve taken shots to the jaw several times, but have never struck back. I certainly never reached for a real gun, let alone a toy gun, simply because I felt some misguided need to even the score “automatically.”
Instead, I’ve always turned the other cheek. I have never struck back, well, at least not physically or with firepower. I admit to eviscerating them with words, slicing and dicing them in the pages of my prose, whether fiction or non-fiction. They may have not been smart enough to know the fatal blow I delivered, but unlike their cheap shots at me, my words will last forever, at least the forever afforded me if my children pay the server bills so my words achieve “billable immortality.”
The shots I have taken through literary mirth regularly hit their target. Even though they are rarely fatal, they are accurately aimed, powerfully delivered, and with the full intent of what was meant.
I only hope that Lakewood doesn’t find a way to make my musings where I toy with others illegal. Like toy guns, now one really knows if they are for fun or not. Sure, they seem innocent enough, perhaps even playful, but they can wound just as deeply, if not more so.
So Lakewood. Have your day. Kill another freedom in our land – the freedom of childhood innocence. Go ahead and throw that Nerf-toting little boy to the ground, pound his face into the turf, search him and cuff him and deliver him to your idea of justice.
But know this. Lakewood won’t become some model community. We won’t be cajoled into believing you’re cracking down on toy-gun toting moppets in the name of justice. We know the truth – another oblique attempt to further erode our precious freedoms a little bit at a time.
Zeig Heil, Police Chief Brett Farrar and Mayor Don Anderson. Now that you’ve got those toy guns off the street, maybe you can look at real crime in your pathetic little part of the world.
In the Emerald City, stocking up on toy guns and plastic bullets, getting ready for the revolution,
– Robb