Banning the use of toy guns could be more damaging to your child than letting them play cops and robbers, writes Fionola Meredith

THIS WEEK IT was reported that replica assault rifles could soon disappear from Mexico’s stores and markets, as the country’s parliament considers legislation to outlaw toy guns. The proposed ban on the production, import, sale, rent and use of plastic weapons is part of an effort to curb an apparent upsurge in aggression among Mexican children.

Congressman Othón Cuevas Córdova, the man behind the plan, was moved to act when his young nephew jokingly pointed a toy pistol (received as a Christmas gift) at him, announcing: “Tio, I’m going to kill you.”

In the febrile atmosphere of conflict zones, possessing toy guns can be a liability: for example, in parts of Iraq, families have been ordered to surrender all fake weaponry to prevent children being mistaken for militants. But even in less fraught regions, there’s a distaste for the sight of youngsters with toy guns.

After a series of high-profile school shootings in the US, jumpiness about anything resembling a firearm is high. In Arkansas, an eight-year-old boy was punished for pointing a chicken nugget at another child and saying “pow pow pow”, while in Georgia, a five-year-old was suspended after he brought a plastic gun less than an inch in size to his kindergarten class. And just before Christmas, there was a row in Galway over the sale of realistic fake assault rifles: as there is currently no law preventing their sale, a five-year-old could, in theory, march in off the street and buy one.

These days, toy guns have become a social no-no. Allowing your son (girls just don’t seem to have the same urge to pull triggers) to use a pretend weapon prompts stares of barely disguised revulsion from fellow parents. But do toy guns deserve their recent reputation?

Many experts argue that the appearance of a gun is itself important, and that the more realistic it looks and feels, the further the child is removed from the stylised, essentially innocent world of imaginary play. Other child psychologists caution that war play is not part of children’s natural fantasy life, but a result of a prematurely absorbed, aggressively marketed adult fascination with power and violence.

Michael Thompson, a psychologist and co-author of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, insists that the important thing is to educate children about the distinction between games and real life: “Play is play. Violence is violence.” Penny Holland, a lecturer in early childhood studies at London Metropolitan University and author of We Don’t Play With Guns Here, used to be a believer in “zero-tolerance” of violent play. But her research showed that preventing boys from playing soldiers, pirates and other boisterous games often led to withdrawal and frustration.

“If children are constantly told ‘no, we don’t play with guns here’, they absorb the sense that they’re bad,” she says. “They may seek negative attention and in the end the whole thing becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.”

Some parents are also concerned about the gender stereotyping involved in assuming that boys have an instinctive affinity with weapons. Yet it’s true that gun-deprived boys display extraordinary ingenuity in creating makeshift weapons out of toilet-roll tubes, carrots, Lego and even their sisters’ Barbies .

What’s more, turning guns into forbidden fruit can be counter-productive. I maintained a domestic ban on toy guns until my then eight-year-old son prevailed on me to let him buy a fake pistol, which shot rubber darts, while on holiday in France. In a burst of enthusiasm at getting hold of the long-withheld item, he managed to fire a dart at short range straight into our landlady’s face. So thwarting our sons’ gun-lust is perhaps a strategy that is bound to backfire. As long as it’s not a mean-looking replica AK47, but something small, plastic and colourful, we can admit that, when you’re a young boy anyway, happiness really is a warm (toy) gun.