Playing with guns is 'good for boys'
MURDO MacLEOD AND SCOTT McCULLOCH
BANNING boys from playing with toy guns is futile and may even damage their development, a leading child psychologist has warned.
Confirming what many guilty parents long suspected, Penny Holland says boys will indulge in gunplay regardless of attempts by schools, nurseries and guardians to stop them.
Holland, who claims boys have fallen victim to politically correct dogma, claims that suppressing their need for boisterous play may be counter-productive.
Holland, senior lecturer in early childhood studies at London Metropolitan University, believes that boys who have been banned from playing at soldiers, pirates, or superheroes, become disruptive and live up to a "bad boy" image.
But her views have been strongly opposed by gun control groups and families of the children killed in the 1996 Dunblane massacre. The tragedy dramatically accelerated the existing trend towards banning toy guns and swords in shops and nurseries alike.
But in a new book, We Dont Play With Guns Here, Holland says the ban on violent play should be reconsidered.
She argues that the zero-tolerance approach that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s was wrong to assume that "the spiral of male violence" could be broken by preventing boys from playing aggressive games.
Holland claims that 30 years after the ban on playing with guns and swords came into vogue, there has been no evidence of a decline in their desire to play violent games.
Boys continued to play behind the backs of staff, even when they had been told it was wrong. Even when the plastic guns and swords were taken away, they did what generations of boys have done before. Pieces of wood, tennis rackets and even pens and crayons, all became guns, swords, and daggers in the fertile young imagination.
Holland adds there is no evidence that boys were more or less likely to grow into aggressive men because of the games they played.
The book suggests that nurseries that had relaxed their ban on guns, swords and violent games reported that boys had more fun together, made closer friendships, and became more creative in other areas of play, such as dressing up as princes in fairy tales. Most such nurseries found that the amount of real fighting between boys declined.
Holland said of the war games: "It is very much part of them making sense of the world. It relates to timeless themes of the struggle between good and evil.
"It seems to represent a developmental need to play with these things and my feeling is that it is counter-productive to work against that.
"Where there has been rigorous enforcement of zero tolerance, it marginalises these children because their interests are so squarely rejected. If they are constantly receiving negative responses to their play interests, with people saying, No, we dont play with guns here, they absorb the sense that they are bad boys. They seek negative attention and it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle."
Helen Fraser, a senior lecturer in child development at Edinburgh University, said she broadly agreed with Hollands findings.
She said: "Its all a matter of balance and proportion. I would be very cautious of allowing too much of a fascination with guns to develop, but I think we can all think of examples where we played games such as Cowboys and Indians and it did us little harm.
"What I would be more dubious about would be some of the scenes of violence on television and the impact of some very violent video games."
A shooting coach, Alan Phillips, said the research was a welcome dose of common sense.
Philips, a senior member of the UK Practical Shooting Association, said: "For years people who shoot have been demonised as representing some kind of gun culture. Maybe gangsters are embroiled in some kind of gun culture, but responsible shooters are certainly not.
"When I was younger we always played Cowboys and Indians and sometimes just used our fingers as guns. We all turned out pretty normal, at least to my mind."
However, the father of one of the victims of Dunblane, Charlie Clydesdale, was less enthusiastic about children playing with toy guns.
Clydesdale, who lost his daughter Victoria when Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and their teacher, admitted it would be difficult to prevent boys playing with toy guns, but urged manufacturers to make their guns less like the real thing.
Recent advances in technology mean that toy guns have become increasingly realistic.
Clydesdale said: "I am not in favour of children playing with guns, but if its going to happen then the guns should not look like real weapons. I am concerned that some toy guns look too much like real guns and that they might be leaving young people more open to the whole gun culture. If they are going to exist then they should be painted in bright colours or look more like space weapons even."
Gill Marshall-Andrews, the Chair of the Gun Control Network, added: "Im very sorry indeed to hear that someone is writing this kind of stuff. Its perfectly possible to grow up as a well-adjusted young man even if one has never had anything to do with guns or toy weapons. What we want to be doing is taking guns out of society and out of circulation.
"Worldwide, guns cause countless deaths, even some of the most notorious recent mass killings have all been perpetrated by people using guns which they held legally. We dont want to encourage more interest in guns."
A brief survey of some Scottish toy shops yesterday showed that children were keen on toy guns despite 30 years of discouragement.
Edinburgh department store Jenners stocks three different kinds of toy gun. All of the models on display had a cowboy theme. They included a plastic replica of the Wild West Winchester repeater rifle, a single hand gun, complete with holster and sheriff badge.
At the nearby John Lewis department store, two kinds of guns were on display. Again, both had a Wild West theme.
According to staff, the guns were the top-selling products in the store.
A member of staff, who asked not to be named, admitted: "Although the toy guns are not our biggest seller in terms of profit, they are our biggest seller by volume."
Briefing
Childrens experts have traditionally believed boys should not be allowed to play with toy guns because of the risk they would grow up to be violent. The campaign against toy weapons has seen toy gun amnesties organised, and a number of shops ban the sale of toy guns, soldiers, tanks and warplanes. Other toys, such as Lego, have been designed so they cannot be used as toy weapons, deliberately avoiding military-style colours.
