Now this is just sad.
Is this a “great gift for children”?
I barely know where to start with this. It makes me so angry. Why would any toy retailer think this was appropriate?
Oy.
The toy itself is exceedingly lame… a wooden board with cutout puzzle pieces, with photos of guns stuck on the pieces. I guess it’s a simple puzzle for toddlers.
Guns are not educational toys for three-year-olds.
First off, the toy in question is not a gun, just a *picture* of a gun on a piece of wood *vaguely* shaped like a gun. This sort of horror at guns is massively unhealthy… not only for the whiner suffering from it, but for everyone around him.
Now, if you want a good educational toy for a child, there are some good ones:
Single-shot training rifles in .22 caliber can apparently be weilded by kids as young as four. And such training rifles should clearly be made available; rather than viewing firearms with horror, kids should be taught what firearms are… and what they aren’t.
Now, there are also more expensive toys for your more advanced learners:
And some for those ready to skip a few grades:
But hey, Australia, if you don’t want your kids to play with or even understand firearms, that’s cool. They can grow up to be ignorant and fearful of them, wholly incompetant to wield them in any useful way. The neat thing is, there are other cultures that take a quite different approach to kids and weapons. I’m curious to see what that culture clash will be like.
15 Responses to “Photos of guns terrifies some Aussies”
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I wonder if this will pass their ‘review’ and be published as part of the comments. 😉
Ah, sheeple, making it so easy for the rest of the World to take advantage … and expecting someone else to defend you. Any one but you and, of course, ‘not in my backyard’.
Now [url=http://olegvolk.net/gallery/friendsandstrangers/madmike/supportive4836.jpg.html]real supportive parenting[/url] leads to a [url=http://olegvolk.net/gallery/friendsandstrangers/madmike/morrigan_michaela0677.jpg.html]happy and unafraid childhood[/url] … while others leave the children afraid of the World. 🙁
Worse yet you might clue preschooler in to the concept that there are rifles other than an AK-47 and pistols other than a Glock.
Journalist haven’t managed that yet.
hoplophobia knows no bounds I guess.
the next overreaction will be about any stick and a bit of string…”it could be an “assault bow”!!!!! what does that teach our children??”
I feel sorry for the sheep-people. they never know peace.
it must weigh heavily on their limited faculties to constantly think they are on the menu and believe, beyond everything to the contrary, they can do nothing about it.
The puzzle is pretty odd, even by the standards of the early the 1960’s, where we had some of most violent toys in the history of the world:
My friend still has his Johnny Seven One Man Army, a weapon that should have been made for real and sent to Vietnam: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Seven_OMA
Somebody shoots an AK-47 at you, and you reply with rifle fire, machine gun fire, a grenade, a antitank rocket, a armor piercing shell, and a anti-bunker missile…then whip out a semi-automatic pistol and start shooting that at them, and they are going to think they have run into entire rifle squad at the very least. 😀
These were also manufactured and marketed in Australia, Great Britain, and Canada BTW.
The box claimed it was “based on the design of a obsolete US military weapon”, but I’d sure like to know what that was.
One thing about it was that it was _big_, not a scaled-down toy gun, but a real adult-sized weapon.
The original commercial for it is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCBvu9MX-po&NR=1
Okay, Junior Gyrenes; “This my rifle, this is my gun, this is my Johnny Seven O.M.A.!”
What this demonstrates is anyone who screams sufficiently loudly can get free publicity. If Aussies were really this weak the place would be speaking Japanese.
What’s the little machine gun being handled by the girl in pink? It’s about the right size to fit into my car.
I think my brother had the Multi-Pistol 09, also made by the nice people who brought us the O.M.A. I kept trying to find the real thing.
There’s a commercial for that on YouTube also:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jiQdigSSCm4
I never saw one of those, but I did have one of these, which was removed from the market after they found out that it could cause permanent hearing damage to the kids who fired it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7E1JO6bADeQ
You go outside with that thing nowadays, and you are going to hear the police bullhorn blaring: “Put down the SAM launcher _right now_!”
To which you must reply: “Allah Is Great! The evil metal bird shall fall!” 😀
And as long as we’re on politically incorrect toys, this one combined violence with sedition: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QR6WP69VcUg
And yes, it did indeed come with the stars and bars flag.
You know that black kid on the next block? Guess who’s going to be busting his ass hauling this thing around for us, unless he wants to get whupped but good.
> I did have one of these
Just the thing for escaping from New York.
It was a lot of fun to fire, though it really couldn’t do damage of any sort.
I kept wanting to figure out a way for it to shoot vortex rings of burning propane.
What has the world come too when even the Aussies have turned into pussies? I guess they were only one letter off anyway.
Michael Scott was quite surprised to open his door after the knock came and discover the little gift the Australian expatriates had left for him on his doorstep… step by step, “Mr. Salty” advanced, his reptilian jaws gaping wide to reveal the needle-sharp teeth. 😉
BTW, checked and nope, still hasn’t been approved by their moderators.
Guns are harmless hobby for people who live in the country. Those of us who live in the cities, who are actually at risk of getting shot and robbed by guns that were recently legal, and now in the hands of criminals, tend to have a different concept of what is harmless.
Target practice and keeping the government off my back, in the country, becomes the lorcin and bag of bullets that shoots a 3 year old boy in the Marcy projects a few years later. The supply train for crime guns is that short.
> Those of us who live in the cities, … tend to have a different concept of what is harmless.
Then SHOOT BACK. When I was growing up, New York City was known as a death trap of crime. When did it start to change? Bernie Goetz shooting some scumbags on a train seemed to be the starting point.
If gun laws are liberalized (i.e. people are allowed to arm and defend themselves), the criminals in the cities won’t have access to more guns than they already do. It will be the law abiding citizens who have access to more guns. And the criminals will know it, especially if they start dying at the hands of regular schmoes.
On the other hand, if you want to restrict the 2nd Amendnet for city dwellers, it’s a valid discussion to have. However, picking and choosing should not be permitted. If the 2nd Amendment is to be abridged, then so should all the others. Imagine how much safer the cities will be when the Army can quarter troops in citizens homes, jury trials are dispensed with, the press is controlled by the police. Obviously, people who cannot be trusted with a gun cannot be trusted with a vote, so you an understand the savings that will stack up when city, county, state and federal elections no longer have to be hel in the urban areas.
On the subject of guns, some folks up in North Alabama and in Tennesse have this:
http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=FX7YAAAAEBAJ&dq=7,823,510
A smaller railgun
http://www.bing.com/videos/watch/video/railgun-firing-by-powerlabs-compilation-video-with-several-shots/8ac097c36d554b5c92af8ac097c36d554b5c92af-286351884602?q=sci+fi+science+rail+guns&FORM=VIRE3