Sherron
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California School Asks Kids To Swap Their Toy Guns For A Free Bike
An elementary school in Hayward, Calif. will sponsor a toy gun trade-in, encouraging kids to swap their harmless toy weapons for a chance to win a new bicycle.
The purpose of the trade-in is to stop children from playing with toy guns, which may make them more likely to commit violence with real guns, said Strobridge Elementary principal Chris Hill.
“Playing with toys guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes them, so as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun,” Hill said in a statement to Mercury News.
The trade-in will take place on Saturday during the school’s “Safety Day,” which will also feature talks on safety tips from police officers and firefighters. Authorities will offer to take pictures and fingerprints of children to be used to help locate them in case they go missing.
Any child who hands over his toy gun will receive a raffle ticket. The school will raffle off four bicycles, and also hand out books in exchange for the tickets.
School photographer Horace Gibson came up with the idea for the trade-in after expressing concerns about gun violence and school shootings, Hill said.
While toy guns are sometimes mistaken for real ones, most come in bright colors, and are deliberately designed to appear distinct from real guns. Some supporters of stricter gun control argue that toy guns make kids more likely to use real guns later in life.
But Yih-Chau Yang, spokesperson for Responsible Citizens of California, a gun rights education group, said the trade-in, while well intentioned, was unlikely to reduce violence.
“Having a group of children playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians is a normal part of growing up,” he said in a statement.
This would not be the first time school administrators had a strong reaction to toy guns. Recently, a Maryland kindergartner was interrogated by school officials for two hours, eventually wetting himself, because he brought his cap gun to school.
Another toy gun, no bigger than a quarter, caused a stir at an elementary school in Massachusetts. The little boy who brought the one-inch toy gun onto the bus was forced to write a letter of apology to the bus driver, and school officials sent notices to parents to reassure them that their children were not in danger.
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Gecko
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Reged: 06/01/04
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The purpose of the trade-in is to stop children from playing with toy guns, which may make them more likely to commit violence with real guns, said Strobridge Elementary principal Chris Hill.
“Playing with toys guns, saying ‘I’m going to shoot you,’ desensitizes them, so as they get older, it’s easier for them to use a real gun,” Hill said in a statement to Mercury News.
---> O. M. G.
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If you air your dirty linen in public, expect people to comment on the skid marks!
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Gecko
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Just wanted to add.....
The vast majority of the baby boomers grew up playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians. We're talking 79 MILLION kids.
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If you air your dirty linen in public, expect people to comment on the skid marks!
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english7
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Reged: 11/27/09
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True. My brothers played those games, and I have pictures of them with their guns in holsters.
But I don't think we can tell the younger parents that the way things were is the way they should see it now.
How different are the movies and tv shows we watched from those kids are watching today? They now get Internet access to violence we couldn't even imagine then. Beheadings, all kinds of gore...
We also had more "stable" intact families than many kids have now. Before anyone argues this point with me, I'm going to emphasize the "more" and "many."
Although I wish we could, I can't see how we can push our ways onto the parents of today. I think we could do better to try to understand the parenting they are attempting, many with huge amounts of heart and soul and tears, in an era which is quite different (and fraught with dangers, real or imagined) from ours.
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Gecko
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How different are the movies and tv shows we watched from those kids are watching today? They now get Internet access to violence we couldn't even imagine then. Beheadings, all kinds of gore...
We also had more "stable" intact families than many kids have now.
---> Those are more contributing factors than toy gun.
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If you air your dirty linen in public, expect people to comment on the skid marks!
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english7
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Reged: 11/27/09
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"contributing factors"?
What?
Do you think contributing factors shouldn't come into play?
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gr8Dad
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Reged: 06/07/04
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So, you will have several hundred kids turn in FAKE guns, and FOUR kids will get bikes...while the rest get SCREWED.
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Why give a "senior" discount, they have had plenty of time to raise the money...
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Redlegg
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Reged: 10/05/06
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or.......why are they teaching them to [censored] :)
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Gecko
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I was pointing out that what YOU said was MORE likely to cause problems than playing with toy guns.
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If you air your dirty linen in public, expect people to comment on the skid marks!
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finz
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Reged: 06/17/08
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I was determined that my kids wouldn't play with toy guns. I didn't buy them or allow family to give them as gifts. My boys still played cops and robbers, they just used sticks instead of toy guns. Kids will be kids.
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