I was at an annual Fourth party at the summer home of my in-laws cousins. My kids were running around with two toy canoe paddles using them as guns ( the little guy was imitating the 5 y.o.). No problem, they tired of that and went on to something else.

Later I sit down with two relatives, one's a retired Civil Engineer and former Army Reserve Officer, the other is a cop and current officer in Army Reserve, in addition was enlisted 4 years active duty armor.


Anyway, old retired one notes that while my kids were running around the pine trees and log cabin shooting indians the other kids were looking at them strangley-none of them had ever "played guns" like my kids were. There were at least 20 other kids there, too. And as I thought about it he was right. I commented that there was a definite lack of good toy guns these days. They both looked at me as if I were suggested Satanic sacrifices.
I am not sure what to make of it totally.

I believe that the gun culture WILL die out in the next 30-40 years due to attrition and stupid laws. Granted I was in the liberal shithole of Rhode Island. "THEY" have succeeded in making firearms a bad thing. We look at them and say "cool" the rest of the population, instead of being at least neutral on the topic has been successfully conditioned to see them as bad without out any consideration of the matter.

  When I said that we used to go to school with our rifles in the trunk to go blasting later, I got two more looks-which I didn't quite expect. I told them, hell, we never shot anyone, what's the difference? They both informed me of the zero tolerance laws-which while they agreed are extreme, neither really felt were any sign of a bigger problem. In retrospect I should have expected it, as they are both part of the Party machine. And who bites the hand of someone who feeds them so well.
It strikes me as sick that while the majority of the folks there would look at "recreational" drug use as a right of passage in high school, they would be horrified at the thought of a kid going shooting after school with his '03.

More and more I feel like an outsider looking in at the fall of our culture and national soul. Yesterday made me realize it that much more.

Tim

Yeah, we used to do that, between swimming, baseball, building tree forts, etc etc. We would have wars all over the neighborhood. Now if they did that the SWAT Team would be rounding them up. The neighbors never minded.

Times have changed-you used to be able to play guns all over the neighborhood with impunity, now you'd be arrested and sent to a shrink. It used to be that the military would never train in neighborhoods, and the neighbors wouldn't have stood for it. Now it's OK for Delta to train in towns and the neighbors call the cops on kids playing with toy guns.

Of course, I sometimes played in the yard with my Lebel carbine, but that's another story.

Tim

I bought this one last year at Party Fair in New Jersey of all places. It looks pretty real to me. It did have more red paint on the barrel end when it was new.
[img]http://www.hunting-pictures.com/members/franksquid/Mvc-004s.jpg[/img]