Subject:
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Re: What do other parents do with Lego guns?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 24 Jun 2000 15:53:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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705 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> Peter Callaway wrote:
> One curiousity which came to mind. How many of you are comfortable with
> child play which involves crashing cars or toppling buildings. This sort
> of play is no less violent than playing cops and robbers or cowboys and
> indians. And there certainly is plenty of this violence in real life.
I am comfortable enough with it that my son plays that way sometimes without
being hassled by me. I choose not to partake. Just like I choose not to enact
gunfights with LEGO (with him...obviously I was doing just that in the pirate
game).
> I'm not up on my statistics, how do drunken driving deaths compare to
> shootings in the US? How many people (especially teens and young adults)
> drive irresponsibly fast even if not drunk? Look at all the bombings
> every year.
Right, but there is something about the GUN icon that freaks people out. I
have tried to show people statistics demonstrating how few people (kids in
particular) die from guns and they just refuse to come to the obvious and
logical conclusions. (e.g. More kids die every year in the US from ingestion
of household chemicals like turpentine, bleach, soap, etc. than from firearms.
But no one is frantically lobbying to remove bleach from the public.)
I don't have thos statistics on hand either, but I bet that car deaths far
exceed gun deaths in the US.
> I have to say that I'm a heck of a lot more bothered by violent media
> (movies, TV, and video games) than by a kid running around with a toy
> gun.
My son mostly doesn't play gun-type games, but I don't have huge problems with
it. And I quite enjoy violent movies when they're done well. But I'm not a
violent person. Well, not really.
> Kids playing cops and robbers or cowboys and indians I think are
> learning social skills and cooperation.
And competition.
> It's also a lot easier to see
> that a child is having trouble expressing and controlling their anger
> when they are playing cops and robbers, than when they are blasting
> everything that moves in a video game.
Agreed. That kind of interaction may be very important, not so much for
letting them learn to socialize, but as a diagnostic for determining when the
kids are not learning to do so. But for that to work, you'd have to get
parents to watch their kids.
> I'm not sure how old I was when I got my first war game (Tactics II by
> Avalon Hill).
Ooh...was your Dad or someone into war games? I think I played Afrika Corps
around age 12 as my first. But I was RPGing first and just found war games
through that vector.
> All of this fascination with war has certainly not turned
> me into a violent person today
But you do have to admit that there is a substantial difference between active
live-action role playing like cops and robbers where people can get very into
their roles and actually become angry and stuff, and pushing stacks of
cardboard chits around a hex map. I've seen war gamers get angry while playing
too, but they were inadequately socialized and just had some issues.
> What I learned from playing war games was to think
> about how immediate actions would affect the future.
I think an important thing to consider is that all of these different kinds of
play probably have good and bad repercussions, as do the denial of the
different kinds of play. What expression of emotions might be being denied to
kids who are raised in a completely peace-affirming household? It is hard to
come down against peace, but at the same time, we evolved in mad race for
resources in which killing was a completely common event. I fear that violent
action may be ingrained and that the way we raise kids into responsible adults
is by helping them deal with inappropriate urges (or whatever) instead of
denying them.
I think a well conducted study of these issues would be a social gold mine.
Chris
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: What do other parents do with Lego guns?
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| (...) I think part of the reason that no such lobby exists is because the frequency of bleach-related violence is very low, and almost no one robs a convenience store with a bottle of soap. Of course you're correct, though; the incidence of (...) (24 years ago, 26-Jun-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
| | | Re: What do other parents do with Lego guns?
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| (...) Here are a few stats that you might find interesting: Did you know-- * Every 13 seconds one of America's 70 million gun owners uses a firearm in defense against a criminal? * American women use handguns 416 times a day in defense against (...) (24 years ago, 26-Jun-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: What do other parents do with Lego guns?
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| (...) I don't know of anyone here in Lugnet which I feel I know them well enough to understand their stance on guns, who would feel that way. (...) One curiousity which came to mind. How many of you are comfortable with child play which involves (...) (24 years ago, 21-Jun-00, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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