CeaseFire Foundation
P.O. Box 20216
Seattle, WA 98102
www.ceasefirefoundation.org

Contact:
DeAnna Martin
Phone: 206-322-1236
[email protected]

CeaseFire Foundation and Seattle Sonics to Swap Toy Guns for Tickets and Prizes

Seattle, WA - The CeaseFire Foundation of Washington will join with the Seattle Sonics to sponsor a toy gun exchange this Saturday, September 21st at the Seattle Center. The event is being coordinated by CeaseFire's Agents of Change, a group of five high school students that have been involved in several projects throughout the year involving gun safety education and awareness.

Children and families can bring their toy guns to the Nate McMillian Basketball Court (on the corner of 5th and Harrison) from 3:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. this Saturday. Sonics players will be on hand to swap these toy guns for tickets and prizes. Members of the law enforcement and medical community will also be present with health and safety information.

"Play-acting with toy guns sends mixed messages to children and is one of the ways that they learn violent behavior," said DeAnna Martin, associate executive director of CeaseFire Foundation. "The Agents of Change have been working diligently throughout the year on a number of safe storage programs, from campaigning to close the gun show loophole to teaching safe firearm storage."

The five Agents are part of the CeaseFire Foundation-sponsored youth leadership program in which students design and implement a yearlong program to educate their peers on gun safety issues. The students, from Seattle, Kelso, Mercer Island and Puyallup, have focused recently on educating their peers on the gun show loophole. They planned and organized a youth rally in Olympia to urge legislators to close the gun show loophole, presented post cards signed by hundreds of voters, and educated their peers about the issue. In addition, they traveled to Washington DC where they lobbied our Senators to support similar legislation at the federal level and participated in direct action to educate the public about H&R Block's support of the National Rifle Association.

The Foundation's Agents of Change program is the first of its kind in Washington State. The five students completed a youth leadership seminar where they crafted an action plan to outline their activities for the coming year. This includes gun safety education days, in-school education seminars and peer mentoring programs.

Agents of Change is supported with funds from Co/Motion of the Alliance for Justice, Comprehensive Health Education Fund, and the Seattle Sonics.


[url]http://www.jointogether.org/gv/news/alerts/reader/0,2061,554172,00.html[/url]

What a bizarre idea.

Just shows the length the other side will go too.

"My First Gun Confiscation"

My eleven-year-old doesn't have any toy guns.  He does have a Marlin lever action .22 rifle and a Thompson Contender .22.  Guess we'll have to stay home.

Eddie

i wish gun-banning desires caused cancer

Not to hijack the thread or anything, but this really burns me.

Children do not get toy guns and other toy weapons because of some inner desire to learn violent actions.  They get toy guns and weapons to imitate their role models and heros.

Today we have Arnie, Stallone, Bruce Willis, Snipes, etc.  In the recent past we had great role models such as John Wayne, "The Rifleman", etc.  Children just want to play "Cowboys and Indians", "Cops and Robbers" to be like the role models they see on TV.

This type of behavior dates back to the Knights of the middle ages and probably long before back to ancient days of Roman Centurions.

This toy guns for tickets and prizes nonsense is just another way to rob children of good character development in the name of poitical goodness.

Ryan

What si sad is that I grew up with many toy guns, all my friends did too, and we never became violent. I mean there was the odd fistfight, but kids are kids [:D]

My next door nieghbor, several years younger than me, was not allowed to own toy guns, they would make him "violent"

He murdered a kid in a fight when he was 18, put a knife through the other kids heart....

Yep, owning toy guns sure makes you violent.....

Damn 1GUN.... too bad you didn't post this earlier.... I would have gone down and protested... made a big scene. Instead I went to my buddies missle silo and slaughtered pigeons..... something I [b]DIDN'T[/b] learn from playing with toys guns as a kid!

Saw it on the news last night.

Yeah, whoever said that owning guns makes you violent is an idiot.  I'm sorry, but that was just too funny.  I hope I'm not the only one laughing on this one.

what a crock of sh*t. if any kid does "learn violent behavior" it's from the bullsh*t they see on the damn television, not from "playing".

oh wait, i forgot, we are supposed to suppress their play and imagination, all for the sake of safety.

DeAnna Martin is an uninformed dumbass b*tch.

bill

I guess it wouldn't occur to any of these parents that instead of being lazy-ass parents and taking the simple solution of ridding guns from their children would to actually take time with their child (I know that's a new concept to many parents...taking time with their child) and teach them proper firearm safety even if they have to take that child to a NRA instructor or find an NRA Eddie Eagle program.
They should also teach their child about the differences about playing war with toy guns and actually being in a real war with real guns.
Many parents may actually find some enjoyment taking up the shooting sports with their child.

But then again liberal parents would find it easier to put their child on a soccer field or in front of a Hollywood media driven television to teach them about life.

[b]ArmaLiter[/b]

An ass beating is no laughing matter.

When I was a kid in a rural k-12 school in Al, we would bring cap guns to play with at recess.

We would play as characters we saw on tv and in movies and emulate them in play.

We would play cops and robbers (Miami Vice was popular at the time), we would play army,(GIjoe)
(Tour of duty), Cowboys and indians (Rifleman,
Johny Ringo, Bonanza, Silverado, Lone Ranger)

No one ever got hurt more than a scraped knee or elbow, and maybe a pine cone "Grenade" up
side the head, other than that we never killed any of our classmates.
As for that matter we were all pretty innocent
when it came to real world violence and death,
The bombing of Pan-Am flight-103 was a wake up call for us, it was talked about alot at school,
and we watched and or heard about it from our parents.
We never had a classmate come into the school and shoot everybody, we all carried pocket knives, and the only classmate we ever had die was a boy who had a heart attack while fishing with his grandpa.

I think it's kind of sad that toy guns and even water pistols are seen as tools of the devil by
people who know whats good for us.
And that even as adults we cant take care of ourselves, or raise our children without Billary to tell us how to do it right.

BTT

Do one better...have as many NRA members, GOA members etc. as you can organize, all turn in 1 or 2 dollar toy guns for the free tickets.  Then do not attend the game, leave large empty voids in the stadium.  Who would want to support the team sponsoring anti-gun movements?   Less seats filled = lost money on parking, food concessions, etc....  

Hit them where it hurts and see if the Sonics back that kind of movement again. :)

You civilians always resort to bashing cops.

Do kids who crahs toy cars grow up to be killer drivers?

Do kids who leave their baby-dolls out in the yard grow up to be negligent parents?

My kids made up their own guns out of sticks, and that was without TV!  It's how boys (especially) play.

[stick]
Scott

You are not a civilian?....

Below is what I just wrote to those snot-nosed kids.....providing this is actually one of their addresses(which I highly doubt)
Maybe if one of them actually does some thinking for themselves, they will do a little research to find out what they're really pushing for.

BTW My 14 month old picked him out a toy M16 over the toy AK, great victory against communism[:d]

Thinking aolong thse same lines, we'd better get us a shitload of those airsoft guns, and a shitload of BB guns becasue it probably aint too far off when they'll rid us of those.....

I'll want my grandkids to get a chance at shootin the BB gun, way down the road when I have em of course.

Careful Imbro, don't break cover!  Remember the brief about this!

  [img]http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/biggrin2.gif[/img]

Even though my 2 boys at the age of 4 and 5 have toy guns, they prefer to make there own guns out of the duplos(large size legos). My two boys are constintely makeing guns out of there duplos that look like an AR15. It is kinda cool, they even make it look like it has a scope on it, and a magazine. So kids are kids, they are going to make guns out of anything!

My two boys accidentally walked into the liveing room one day while I was watching black hawk down, so I let them watch a little of it during some of the battle scenes, then when I knew it was going to get a little gorry I turned it off. Ever since then they have been going around imitateing soldiers with there pretend home made M16's made out of duplos, and getting the bad guys. The bad guys are either the ones that crashed the planes into the buidings, or the ones that made the helicopter crash in black hawk down!

Then when ever cops is on, then they pretend to be police officers getting the bad guys and putting them in jail! It is funny that make this make shift jail in there room and take turns being the good guy and bad guy.

Boys are boys, let them be boys!

Screw the Seattle Sissy Sonics, they suck as a basketball team anyway!

I have seen both resolutes of kids having and not having toy guns.

My Aunt does not allow her kids(Boys age 7 and twins 2) to have toy guns. My brother(Boy age 5 ) & Cousin(boy age 7 & girl 4) do allow their kids to play with toy guns. Whenever my aunts kids are at my brother's or cousin's all they want to do is play with their toy guns. As far as I know aunts kids have never shot a real gun.

I bought a chipmunk rifle for my nephew and cousin's kids so they could learn how to shoot and  they love to shooting it. My cousin's son was telling his grandpa(turning liberal) about it in front of aunt(another liberal) and she almost had a cow about him shooting it.

IMO by not letting them play with guns only makes them have more a fascination of them.

Everything a young boy needed to know about being a gentleman, morals, etc, could be learned by watching The Rifleman.

I salute your young boys.  Good to know There's gonna be some good Americans a few years down the road!!!!

In my opinion they are teaching the kiddies early to do what teacher and government says...no matter what mom and dad think...........by the time they are adults they will turn in anything or anyone for any reason......a mind......it's a terrible thing!!!