Little-Bang Theory of Violence: It All Begins With a Toy Gun

The noteworthy thing about turn-of-the-century Daisy-type guns, says Penn State history professor Gary Cross, is that these "toys" were marketed to adults. One 1890 catalogue billed its air rifle as "just the thing to make the neighbor's cat scratch and growl and doggy fly for home"; another similar rifle was advertised as a parlor game. Pest control and family entertainment, not shoot-'em-ups in the back yard.

Though Montgomery Ward did make pretend brigade guns for children, they were paired with miniature drums and ceremonial swords. They appealed to make-believe military parading and patriotism, writes Cross in his book "Kids Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood."

"Toy guns in this era were about history and an introduction to manhood," he said in an interview. "They weren't about combat."

Then in 1934 movie cowboy Buck Jones endorsed air rifles for boys who wanted to play Daniel Boone. Toymaker Hubley promoted "cowboys and Injuns" games with its "hard-riding, sure-shooting" Dandy, and marketed the Winner to "kids who idolize the G-men."

Those Al Capone-type references hit close to home, and incited the first wave of organized toy gun protests, led by that spitfire Rose Simone. A Chicago judge huffed in support, "When [the boy] gets used to pulling the trigger of a toy gun, it's not a long step toward pulling the trigger of a real one."

Back and forth, parental permissiveness, parental anxiety. With World II, guns were patriotic again, even in play, but the horrible assassinations and body bags of the '60s changed that. Sears and Bloomingdale's stripped toy guns from their Christmas inventories in 1968.

Dr. Spock reversed his previously pro-pistol position in the 1968 edition of his child care manual, encouraging parents to discourage toy gun play.

In 1983, along came Ralphie in "A Christmas Story," pleading for the Red Ryder BB gun of yesteryear.

* * *

You'll shoot your eye out!

Would that the argument were that simple, Mrs. Parker.

But the truck against toy guns has never truly been about shooting one's eye out, not really. No, the fear has been that handling pretend pistols will turn tots into trigger-happy warmongers, BB's to bullets.