As a farm boy I grew up with guns. The Old Man had a double barrel shotgun tucked away at the top of the wardrobe and professional shooters regularly came onto our land to hunt hares, rabbits and pheasant. I often found limp, bloody animal carcasses on the front porch in the morning. Death is a constant presence in the country. I once heard a neighbour tell some city cousins: “This is a farm. We kill things here.” In the 1960s the Second World War still loomed large in the imagination of British schoolboys. My boy’s newspaper, The Hotspur, was chock full of men with guns – stout Tommies with Bren guns and cold-faced Germans with Mausers and flamethrowers.
Most of our schoolyard games involved shooting, wounding or blowing up our scabby kneed mates. Emptying a couple of shotgun cartridges and making an improvised bomb was a particular highlight but required a certain amount of subterfuge. I remember my older brother blowing up a rat in a barrel – it was as big as butcher’s dog. For a child of my era the greatest prize of all was an Action Man figure, complete with bazookas, grenades and the whole arsenal of death. Australian culture, too, is saturated in militarism. At the museum in the Victorian goldfields city of Beechworth there’s a photograph of boy soldiers rehearsing for the Great War. Most look no older than 12. Oddly enough there is something touchingly innocent about these pint-size soldiers. The same is true of the ludicrous xenophobia which permeated my childhood.
But today’s world, with its 24/7 terrorism, gangland shootings and violent video games, is far nastier and more brutal. Is it still acceptable to let your kids run around with toy guns? My wife, who learnt to shoot as a girl in Nigeria, sees no problem about Myles having a water pistol; in fact she wants him to learn about guns when he is older. I have canvassed the opinion of many parents over the past few weeks. Most seem to accept that guns and war play are an unescapable part of boyhood. “We try to limit our son’s access to toy guns,” said one mother. “But I don’t think you can have a blanket ban – they’ll just turn a tree branch or a broom into a gun if you do that.” Other parents report having a “disarm” a visiting child who arrived at the house with a vast assortment of pistols, knives and grenades. “We had a weapons crate at the front door,” said one mum.
My eldest son, now 24, was raised in a gun-free household but didn’t display any obvious pacifist tendencies. He once had stitches over one eye following a violent clash with plastic swords. Indeed, many childhood experts do not subscribe to theory that early exposure to guns will turn your child into a violent adult. American parenting author Christine Gross-Loh says there is no evidence to suggest than engaging in gunplay is bad for your child – quite the reverse. “It can actually help teach children to read each other’s facial cues and body language, figure out their place in a group, and learn how to adjust their behaviour in social settings,” she says. But toy guns and aggressive war games are understandably frowned upon in progressive Western countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Britain and Canada; although I suspect rural parents are less PC around guns than their city counterparts.
I actually think we should remove toy guns from the whole debate. We cannot shield our children from the evils of the world. Gun violence exists. The slaughter of innocents is played out on our TVs and computer screens daily. Will denying Myles a water pistol make him a better, more compassionate person? I don’t think so. Like the mother I quoted earlier, it’s probably best to monitor his access to toy weapons but not to impose a total arms ban. He can terrorize his little mates with a replica Mauser but blowing up live rats is verboten.
