The fact that the children play with guns or rifles is a topic that I have never liked, in fact it really shocks me when we go to some friends' house and my daughters wield those toy weapons. And what seems to me in very bad taste are these bibs that show the motto “Future member of the Rifle Association” or find a children's room decorated with all kinds of weapons.
Nor do I like to see babies wearing soccer team suits or carrying banners of political parties (a fairly common image during election time), although at least in those cases it is assumed that violence is not promulgated.
In fact, these unusual bibs have something to do with politics. Precisely in electoral time and before a possible victory of Barack Obama (who does not favor the freedom to carry weapons, although we say that he does not do much to limit it either) the president of the Rifle Association also campaigns.
And here is one more mode of propaganda for his cause: indoctrinate parents and children with such a motto that wants to perpetuate between generations a rather dangerous hobby. In a country where there are 30,000 deaths a year from firearms that almost anyone can buy, I think that there is no need for new "adherents to the cause."
Finding the National Museum of Firearms of Virginia a souvenir like those bibs that indicate that the baby will be a member of the Rifle Association seems to me in very bad taste. The motto "Future member of the Rifle Association" is printed on the bib, which sells for about 10 euros, on the National Rifle Association (NRA) logo.
The children's room or the weapons room?
And since the baby wears such a bib, why don't we go to decorate your room with rifles and revolvers. In one of the rooms of the Museum of Firearms, a classic room of the average American child is recreated, with a bookcase in which several toy rifles hang and a bed on which revolvers and comics of warlike exploits rest.
A quite shocking children's room, no doubt. And it is not just a matter of taste, because if it were to decorate with princesses or with roosters (to say something) I would not like that room either, but I consider them to be quite harmless reasons.
Normalizing weapons in the child's environment only normalizes violence. Probably those children, children of gun fans, wield them in a few years, because there are many other reasons why they have acquired that "hobby" and not only that their room looks like an arsenal.
In fact it might not be so strange that, in a country where there are manuals that propose, among other barbarities, leave loaded firearms within the reach of children at home to prove their recklessness, rifles and guns end up being so "friends" and companions of children and adults.
And between "friends" because the data indicate that in the United States 45% of households keep weapons and 34% of adults own a gun: as a result of this proliferation 60 children die a year from firearms incidents.
Each educates their children with their "hobbies" (or not, that my daughters do not even know which teams we are their parents). It is difficult not to transmit the hobbies, but if we advocate not forcing them to do the extracurricular activity we want, with more reason we should not instill certain practices that can also be so dangerous. And is that weapons are not a "hobby" anyone.
Definitely, "educate" from children to our children in the use of firearms, marking his way as future members of arms associations, living with rifles, setting the house with guns ... it is rather indoctrinate and perpetuate the acceptance of violence in a society too accustomed to it.
Official Site | NRA Museum, NRA Photo and more information | The Confidential In Babies and more | Is it good for children to play with guns ?, War toys, Living with weapons, Daddy, buy me a Kalashnikov !, Play to kill (I) and (II)
