Kid Considerations: Bang Bang

Kid Considerations:

Bang Bang, You're Dead

For several years, I have been adamantly opposed to allowing “gun play” in our program. The kids know that our most important rule is that it is unacceptable to hurt others, whether it’s on purpose or because you’re being careless, and that guns hurt. I know that a lot people disagree with me on this point, which is the advantage of being the owner—I get to set the policy on this one.

Parents and staff know this rule as well, but we occasionally still get someone arguing that things like squirt guns are okay, because they “just squirt water.” There are many things that squirt water and aren’t shaped like a weapon. In addition, I am not telling anyone what choices they should make at home. Not the point.

The point is that, for the kids in our program, there is at least one place in the world where, for part of their day, they have to think beyond “bang bang, you’re dead.”

When we first instituted our “no gun play” policy, it was before the Columbine shootings changed the landscape. Since then, I am increasingly convinced that our policy is one small step in the right direction. This isn’t about “taking away all the guns” or “attacking the second amendment” either—this is about helping young children develop a sense of social interaction and emotional expression that doesn’t default to violence as a means of getting attention or delivering retribution.

There is one common element that the overwhelming majority of mass shootings share, whether they take place at home, in school, in the workplace, or at a randomly chosen public location, and whether they get lots of media attention or are not reported beyond a local market. That one common element is that the shooter was male. Between 1999 and 2013, every mass shooting in the United States was committed by a man (source: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/mass-shootings-central-american-history-article-1.1457514). But the culprit isn’t the genetics of maleness, it’s the conflation in our culture of masculinity with violence, especially gun violence. And calling out that relationship is not an attack on men, or even on guns per se, but is an insistence that we critically examine all of the influences that contribute to a gun violence rate that is higher in the U.S. than in any other developed country.

One disturbingly blatant example of this mentality is an ad for the Bushmaster, a .223-caliber rifle that is a semiautomatic version of an assault rifle used by the U.S. military. It is also the weapon used to murder 27 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. This is the ad:

Of course, there is satire here, there is an attempt at humor on the Bushmaster website, but the ad itself, and the marketing campaign, point to that deeply rooted equation of masculinity for U.S. boys and men—the message that “being a man” = “being tough” = “being violent,” and that challenging that equation even in a small way automatically emasculates men.

The conflation of behavior, guns, and violence begins innocently enough for many, by misunderstanding how young children interpret reality. There have been dozens of incidents in the last few years of young children (mostly boys) shooting friends, siblings, even parents or other adults (such as this incident in April of 2013: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/09/child-shooting-deputy-wife/2066289/; or this one from 2012: http://www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/20270020/toddler-shot-killed-by-child-under-5-in-minneapolis). These incidents are not about children expressing anger—they are horrible, tragic accidents that happen because young children cannot reliably discern between toy guns and real weapons. They happened because these children picked up a gun, thinking it was a toy. Of course they can tell that a plastic, neon purple squirt gun is not a “real” gun with bullets, but they can’t extend that to determine that a handgun or rifle made of metal isn’t a toy.

But it is this early experience, this positioning of weapons as “toys” and violence as “play” that has serious implications for young boys who grow up with the cultural acceptance of guns as everyday objects. It also has serious implications for young girls, who are learning that male violence, whether directed toward other men or toward women, will be waved off under the excuse that “boys will be boys.”

Yes, I know, if this were true, then wouldn’t all boys become killers? Of course not—there are many other factors that influence how a child incorporates cultural messages into behaviors. Factors such as media exposure, domestic violence, parental attitudes towards guns and violence, peer interactions, personality traits, etc. all contribute to the ultimate relationship that children develop with violence in general, and guns in particular. And this is the point of our “no gun play” policy—that in this place, in this time, we are committed to making sure our influence is one that compels children to find other alternatives.