Anti-Toy-Gun Crusade

Northern Advocate, 22 March 1937, Page 10

Anti-Toy-Gun Crusade

Some 22,000 youngsters in Illinois dhjoyed a big Christmas without toy pistols or small rifles, says the “Christian Science Monitor.” The children signed pledges expressing the thought that “playing toy guns teaches disrespect, for the lives of men and animals, contempt for law, and results in crime and murder.”

The 22,000 pledges represent double the number in the state a year ago and indicate progress in the campaign to rid neighbourhoods of the play among small children with toy weapons, according to Mrs. William F. Krahl, chairman of the humane education department of the Illinois Congress of Parents and Teachers.

Right Track.

Though letters have come in from almost every state and from Canada asking for information about organising against the use of toy guns by boys and girls, the crusade is just beginning, Mrs. Krahl said. It takes a long time, she indicated, before constructive toys can be substituted for rifles, BB guns, and pistpls. But a deep undercurrent of interest and an awakening on' the part of parents to the harmfulness of toy weapons are ’ apparent, Mrs. Krahl said. After every radio broadcast, every speech against the toy gun ar a harmful instrument, she receives letters from parents saying that she is on the “right track” and that playing with toy weapons is a step toward the use of real ones later.

Who Will Act First?

“Perhaps legislation is the only way,” said Mrs. Krahl in an interview. “The greatest difficulty is to get the stores to stop selling the toy guns and to get the manufacturers to cease making them. Many of the Jieads of toy departments and the officials of some of the big stores are quite in accord with our motives and agree that the guns are a destructive play toy, but they hold that not until all stores can agree to oust them at one sweep will any one store take the lead.” When Mrs Buyer of Toys goes into a store and finds one item missing, she immediately proceeds to a department that is well stocked with all her needs, Mrs. Krahl has found in her work with department stores. Though a given store may not want to carry toy guns, it finds in order to sell sleds, games, waggons and bicycles, it must also be complete in its small gun section, it is learned. *

“I would suggest as subtsitutes for toy .weapons,” said Mrs. Krahl, “outdoor activity toys, fcuch as roller skates, ice skates, sleds, stilts, locomotion toys, including scooters, waggons, bicycles, see-saws, and all varieties of ball games.

Fill Minds-iWth Other Things.

“If neighbourhood parents would pool their resources and agree to buy for small groups of their children one or two pieces of outdoor play apparatus, or toys leading to an interest in machanics and building, if they would promote whittling contests, stamp and coin collecting, and other hobbies and special interests, if parents would do some of these things, the toy gun would soon be crowded out. Let us fill the minds, hearts, and hands of our children so full of character-build-ing toys that there will be no room for the character-destroying toy gun.” Mrs. Krahl urges parents not to fail with sling shots, bows and arrows, their children by condoning their play swords and whips. The habit, she recognises, is firmly entrenched among children and needs long, careful education to eliminate it.