Free Republic

The Trudeau government is looking into whether it should regulate imitation firearms following three Toronto incidents which saw police shoot and kill men brandishing relatively harmless guns. Dr. Dirk ​Huyer, Ontario's chief coroner, alerted federal Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould and her officials to the cases, which led three coroner juries to recommend Ottawa revise the Criminal Code to help prevent such fatalities. The minister confirmed in a letter last month to Huyer that the department is reviewing proposals to tighten controls on look-alike weapons that police often have no choice but to treat as genuine. A spokesman for the minister,...

“A community groups (sic) has a strong message for parents this Christmas,” Buffalo, NY’s wivb.com reports. “They want to help keep toy guns out of children’s hands…to prevent them from getting their hands on a real one.” Ellipsis indeed. How does that work? . . . “Whatever you put in a child’s hands that’s what he feels comfortable with and you put a toy gun in his hands at an early age and when he gets older he’s going to want the real thing,” said Leonard Lane, president of Buffalo F.A.T.H.E.R.S organization. That’s why Lane is encouraging parents to give...

“Until imitation guns are made safer, parents should stop buying them,” said Sen.Richard Blumenthal last week (Photo: Heather Burian/NBC Connecticut)A Connecticut Democrat wants parents to pump the brakes on buying toy guns until a bill he has introduced to make them more readily recognizable passes Congress. Joining Hartford Police and staff at St. Francis Hospital, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal last week described his pending legislation as a simple fix aimed at keeping the public and law enforcement safe. But until it makes it to law, he wants parents to take action on their own to keep toy guns out of...

According to People, Stewart’s attendance was highlighted by Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Gross said Stewart had approached him with an idea about a new way to push gun control and that he was “impressed” by her proposal. He said, “She came to us because she has something she wants to do with this issue. She eagerly shared her idea and without hesitation and is showing up tonight. She is committed to actually doing something, not just lending her name.” While no specifics were given about Stewart’s gun control idea, People reports that it...

My mom was pretty relaxed during our childhood and only had a few nonnegotiable, never ever going to change, concrete rules. Her biggest: no water guns. This water gun ban had nothing to do with water shooting toys in general (though with four kids running around it would've made sense that she didn't want the water wars) and everything to do with her firm belief that guns are not toys. We still had all of the same Summer fun, but with water squirters that didn't look like deadly weapons and never trivialized this important topic. We didn't make childhood...

Atlantic City police officers confiscated 62 realistic-looking toy guns from a Boardwalk shop, police said Tuesday.

Given the apprehension and suspension of the “notorious” playground “menace” Caitlin Miller for committing random acts of make-believe at her Hoke County, North Carolina school, I recently felt compelled to do a soft-target search of our home. Suspecting that our house was riddled with the same type of “weapons” that got five-year-old Caitlin in such trouble, I wanted to make sure that the minor residents with whom I share this home would not find themselves in the same situation as little Miss Miller. Alas, the search of our home—that was cleverly dubbed “Operation Slow and Curious”—had shocking results.

Kids in Baltimore showed up to St. Frances Academy Community Center Saturday night to swap their toy guns for more peaceful prizes. Fake weapons surrendered were replaced with basketballs, stuffed animals, art supplies and other goodies provided by the community. Water guns, replica guns and BB guns were then painted and used in the background of a mobile mosaic made by the nonprofit organization Mosaic Makers. The completed art project will be displayed in honor of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Cleveland boy fatally shot by police while playing with a toy gun two years ago. Event coordinator Ralph E. Moore,...

I thought young Freeper parents could use a reference thread for "everything your child should know about toy gun safety/ gun safety. For instance: 1) Don't point toy guns at children too young to play with them. 2) Play with toy guns with an adult present. 3 ) Toy guns are outside toys. Your house rules may vary, but I think having a conservative resource for this information would be a welcome response to more statist notions. What are your house rules? What do you teach (or have you taught) your children?

Toy Guns Are Not All Fun and Games Alvin Poussaint, M.D. and Susan Linn, Ed.D. Are We Steering Our Sons Towards Violence? The shelves are stocked with weapons of every kind: handguns, rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, and sci-fi light sabers. Are you in the exhibit hall of an NRA convention? No. You’re strolling down the aisles of a toy store in search of a birthday present for your six-year-old son. Buying toy guns for kids seems completely natural to millions of American parents. Yet, the same parents would not even think about buying guns for their little girls. When we ...

An off-duty Baltimore policeman on Saturday shot and killed a man he says appeared to be holding him at gunpoint in the suburbs of Linthicum Heights.But when Anne Arudnel County detectives surveyed the crime scene, they realized the would-be robber was wielding a toy gun. “It appears that this is a robbery gone wrong and the officer fired in self-defense,” Anne Arundel Police Lt. Ryan Frashure told WJZ News. “No officer wants to kill anybody much less use his service weapon if he doesn’t have to. This was just an unfortunate series of events.” ~snip~In November, Mayor Marty Walsh of Boston passed a...

The people of New York can sleep soundly in their beds tonight, knowing that their diligent Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, has scored a major victory in the war on guns. I’m not talking about the illegal handguns favored by the majority of gang members driving up the murder rate in New York City or the “assault rifles” which are manufactured right in our own state. No, this was a victory over toy guns. (Press&Sun Bulletin) Three dozen online retailers will no longer be able to sell realistic-looking toy guns, Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced Tuesday.Schneiderman reached a settlement with...

Researchers at a Dallas children’s hospital aim to show that non-powder firearms such as airsoft, BB and paintball guns should be viewed as “powerful weapons” rather than toys. A study by researchers with Children’s Medical Center Dallas shows that those devices are “causing increasingly severe and sometimes life-threatening injuries in pediatric patients,” the group said on Oct. 23. They will present the findings at the American Academy of Pediatrics Conference and Exhibition in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. “Non-powder guns are not toys, and an adult should always supervise their use by children,” said Dr. Nina Mizuki Fitzgerald, lead researcher of...

The attorney general is slated to announce today settlements with five retailers, including some industry giants, for selling toy guns that don’t fit state appearance requirements. Walmart, which sold 149 illegal toy guns throughout the state, including 20 in New York City, also agreed to pay a $225,000 penalty. Eric Schneiderman says Walmart, Amazon, Kmart, Sears, and online retailer ACTA agreed to the settlement. Rice was shot and killed by patrol officers who said they thought the boy’s toy gun, which did not have the brightly colored markings indicating it was a toy, was real. All told, the attorney general...

New York is forcing Walmart, Amazon, and other retailers to pay over $300,000 for the crime of selling toy guns. The settlement stems from an investigation by the state’s attorney general office, which sent cease and desist letters to the retailers in December for breaking its strict law against children’s toys. “State law prohibits the sale of imitation guns in realistic colors such as black, blue, silver, or aluminum, unless it has a non-removable one-inch-wide orange stripe running down both sides of the barrel and the front end of the barrel,” according to the attorney general office. All fake toy...

Check out this old toy gun commercial from the 1950s or '60s and compare it to how children who play with toy guns (or even their own food or fingers fashioned like a gun) are treated today. Do you think kids today are going to want to uphold their 2nd Amendment rights after they are terrorized and suspended or expelled by their schools for chewing a breakfast tart into an L-shape or being forced at age five to undergo a psych eval for bringing a Hello Kitty bubble gun to class?

Does a book that shows kids how to make homemade guns belong in a science museum gift shop? One gun control advocate says such a book has no place at Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, where Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction 2: Build a Secret Agent Arsenal is currently available for purchase

Two cops rush to the scene. “This sounds like a gun battle — over there!” one calls to his partner. They see the suspects: two little boys, wielding rifles. The police officers do not shoot. Rather, they examine the boys’ weapons and break into big smiles: “Hey, is it real?” one officer asks. “Looks like real,” his partner marvels. “And it sounds like real,” the first officer confirms. “Right — every shot!” says the announcer, because this is on television. It’s an ad, from 1967, for the Sound-O-Power M-16 military rifle, a big hit for Marx Toys at Christmas that...

Relatives of John Crawford, pictured, believe he was holding a toy gun when police shot him dead at a Walmart store A man shot dead by police in a U.S. supermarket may have been killed after picking up a toy gun, his relatives have claimed. John Crawford was gunned down at a Walmart store in Beavercreek amid reports that he was waving a rifle at customers, including children. But relatives of the 22-year-old have contacted civil rights organisations after claiming he was holding a toy gun in the toy section of the shop when the incident unfolded. LeeCee Johnson, who...

There was a time in America when the first priority of our schools was educating our children. That's no longer the case. Today, schools are primarily job programs for the unions and indoctrination centers for the Left. The great teachers in our schools are now used as cover for the mediocrities, the overpaid administrators, and the blatant attempts to force feed liberalism to children before they become experienced enough to recognize all the problems associated with it. Since the Left has been losing the public battle to curtail the 2nd Amendment, liberals started fighting it in a place where they...