Potato Guns!
This weekend, my order for these POTATO GUNS
showed up. At first glance, looking at the potato gun, I thought, what a dumb toy. Boy, was I wrong. The guns are a blast and a good way to get your kids outside and getting some exercise. Upon opening the potato guns, I loaded one and snuck up on my daughter and tried it out on her. My daughter, who is generally feeling pretty sluggish after school all week, laughed and ran after me. She picked up a couple of the guns and took them to a friend's house where they played all afternoon outside like kids used to do. They had a blast.Remember when kids could play with toy guns and they were not a symbol of all that was evil in the world? My daughter doesn't. She warned me that she could never bring the potato gun to school without the risk of expulsion. The sheer joy of running around being a kid is denied to our children today. It is a shame--it is no wonder our kids are so fat today. The slightest hint of rambunctiousness is medicated out of them and diagnosed as ADHD. A pointed finger becomes a symbol of a weapon that requires therapy or suspension. The whole world is now a place where mean adults (especially males) will kidnap you if you dare venture out into the world. It is best to just stay home, watch tv and eat junk food to squelch whatever desire you have to be autonomous in the world. Do we ever realize what joy we have taken from our kids in exchange for safety?
Update: Gina from ginasrantings blog has tracked down some more potato guns. Amazon is sold out.
Update II: Look what Gina has started by finding more potato guns--groups of carpooling potato gun addicts--what will be next? Potato gun office fights?
posted by Helen at 8:21 AM
52 Comments:
I remember the days when we would run around and played all day , now most kids play on the computer all day , instaed of enjoying the out doors , do you remember the tag gun , I think it was called lazer tag , ( i think ) more expensive than what you bought but had the same effect .. but that was bought many moons ago for my son who is 24 , now I would like to purchase something like that for the youngest .. so my next question is where did you find this pot gun ?
Kids aren't typically allowed to ride their bikes alone till they are quite old and then only when encumbered with protective gear. Also, smaller families mean fewer kids to play with both in and out of the family. Playing outside alone leaves nobody to do the chasing... However, on the video game console Super Mario is always ready for a chase.
I went for a mtn bike ride over the weekend and was shaking my head in astonishment realizing how much of the world is chained and fenced off. Every where I looked was "No Trespassing" . . . I'll take an ADHD prescribing psych any day if we could just get rid of those pesky trial lawyers puttin all those signs up. oh well, hope they have some potato guns left to buy. merry xmas!!
Gina--the potato gun is at Amazon.com--you can just click on the link in my post.
i just checked , no potatoe guns left .... hahaha
Everyone should move back to small towns. I work in a huge metropolis (the big one, NYC) but live many miles away and therefore endure a long commute, but the payoff if a very pleasant lifestyle including kids playing outdoors almost all year. Riding bikes on our street, making snowmen, etc. I have to say that I always thought play guns were too weird to be fun (you know: the real ones aren't toys, therefore...) but there are trees to climb and other games to play. They can't even play dodge ball in schoo, which is definitely weird and silly, but at least they still horse around at home.
What's the range on this thing?
The loss is not only physical, it seems to me that the ubiquitous "zero tolerance" rules, always and only invoked to satisfy political correctness, also erode the ability of young people to evaluate and judge fuzzy situations to discern why something is OK, and something else might not be. Instead, we try to level the entire earth to eliminate all slopes, making it impossible to learn when they might be slippery, or how to hold footing on the grade (I might be torturing this metaphor a bit, but I mean well....)
Little kids hold hands, and we cluck cluck over inappropriate sexualization. They call each other names, and are shushed immediately before they have the chance to learn how to judge what epithets can be playful and which are actually injurious. They point mock weapons, and the zero tolerance "philosophy" prevents them from learning the very real difference between stuff that actually damages (bad) and stuff that can be simply mocking fun (OK).
Then, having confused the bejabbers out of the next generation, we all go off for a paintball weekend.
I'm one of five kids and my mother used to kick us all out of the house and lock the doors just to get some peace. Now, I'm a father of four boys who works from home and I found myself doing the same thing. Because my kids are outside, we get every kid in the neighborhood over and our yard is trashed, but at least I won't get robbed. Our house is the only house that looks like someone actually lives there.
Oh, we did the no guns thing with our older two boys until we figured out that they would use anything they could point as a gun.
anonymous 8:23:
The range on the potato gun is said to be 50 feet. My daugher informs me that it also shoots apples!
> Do we ever realize what joy we have taken from our kids in exchange for safety?
We didn't get safety in exchange, we just took joy.
The whole world is now a place where mean adults (especially males) will kidnap you if you dare venture out into the world.
Ouch. As a Russian immigrant, I so agree with this. If I were to sum up everything I don't like about America in one sentence, the sentence would be "What about the children?"
I guess this is what General Patton referred to as cowards who "breed more cowards". I hope this nation doesn't become a nation of impotent slugs, like some European countries.
If Amazon is out of potato guns (gina at 9:15), there is hope for us yet!
Retread
Heh...we went to a Christmas party over the weekend (an actual Christmas party, not a "Holiday Gathering" or a Winterfest") where the kids all got a gift...my boys (5 and 3) came home with toy guns, swords, and a lightsaber. They've been happily chasing bad guys all weekend -- oops -- I mean, disenfranchised individuals... :) We get a lot of crap for letting our kids play with toy guns, but that's how kids learn about the world. When we take their play away from them, we take away innumerable opportunities for learning the unwritten rules of society and how to cope.
I just turned 24. Throughout my entire childhood my mother sternly disapproved of any toy firearms, even to the point of sneaking peeks into Christmas gifts from relatives and then throwing them in the garbage if they were toy guns (assuming of course, that I did not know. I did, and frequently rescued them).
What good did it do? None that I can see. I'm now a former soldier, and currently an avid shooter.
I'm reminded of a tale from one blogger, who said that a neighbor lady brought her son over to play with his son. She said her son was now allowed any "violent" toys. The first thing the kid did, was pick up two sticks, hand one to the other boy, and start sword fighting, much to the horror of his mother.
I think the most hideous sentence I hear coming out of the mouths of young mothers today... "what if something happens and I could have prevented it". This is used to keep kids under total supervision... never letting them experiment when they'd be young enough to do little harm. (these are the same mothers who will blame a parent every time if a child gets hurt doing anything at all... "why weren't you watching?")
Back in the day... gad I sound old!... they said kids were getting fat because all they did was watch TV. There was just as much of an uproar over that as there is now over computers and video games.
I'm pretty sure it's not the TV, computer, game, or even junk food - it's the perception by parents that they can control all situations and ensure their kid never ever gets hurt. Modern conveniences have given parents too much time to hover.
I think we need to implicate the vast amounts of corn syrup we pour into our children. Check out a book called "Fast Food Nation", you will be shocked. It's no wonder our kids are larded like sows when we feed them junk and keep them cooped up like veal-cows.
What about firing ground beef at vegans?
Did you also purchase the Fart Pen?
random tangent thought, if we're so caught up on politically correct, why are there so many questionable programs on cable/satellite TV, see what ever you want on the internet and so many violent video games?
My children's school in Colorado doesn't allow them to play tag at recess...the principal is worried someone will get hurt. The school is Leawood Elementary, a few blocks from Columbine High School, and all things considered I think that makes them more than usually worried about anything that can be construed as "violent" or hurtful to children. But it's ridiculous not to let elementary kids play tag.
I'm reminded of an episode of the "comedy" "Allin the Family" where Archie gives a toy gun to his grandson for Christmas. True to form, Meathead flips out, literally, scaring me at the time (I was 7), breaks the toy and forbids Archie from contact with his son. Meathead's most violent moment was in opposition to "violent" toys.
Then again, this is the guy who got a vasectomy (more scary to me now than when I was 7!) because he didn't want to bring more children into such a terrible world.
The moral of the story: some people perhaps shouldn't reproduce...
> Do we ever realize what joy we have taken from our kids in exchange for safety?
If you look closely at the people who've *taken* the joy, they tend to be the kind of people who have never experienced joy in their lives. I'm not so sure it's about safety- as someone else pointed out, we haven't gained any safety- I suspect removing joy was the *original goal*, and safety is just the cover story.
Kind of ties in with the American definition of sin, i.e. "someone else having fun". In this case, the only difference between Left and Right is which kinds of fun they want to eradicate.
Why don't more people just tell the joyless prigs to get a life?
I think I'll get a potato gun for the office.
by the way, you might find this photo-audio documentary on childhood obesity pertinent and/or interesting...
Teenage Waistland
http://parenting.ivillage.com/multimedia/0,,813v40bp,00.html
"What if something happens and I could have prevented it"
Then you'll face charges of "felony child neglect."
Bare bones of a story in my city: Mother was cooking, cleaning, dunno what, and sets down a pot of boiling-temperature water. Three-year-old daughter somehow gets into it, and suffers 2nd/3rd degree burns. Mother takes daughter to emergency room, and is promptly arrested. Loudmouth prosecutor, with no investigation, immediately says he'll bring criminal charges.
There are plenty of "joyless prigs" (good one, anon!) who are ready and eager to turn what resonable people might call a horrible accident into a case of child abuse. After all, THEIR standard for parenting is perfection: Anything less must be criminal.
So it's not just the parents, it's the Child Protection Industry.
Ah, I was born at just the right time, as circa 1970 was the perfect nexus of emerging technology, play "violence", and not-yet-conceived political correctness.
Not only did I suck on candy cigarettes, I'm pretty sure I recall an edible, waxy gun filled with syrup. After killing your enemies, you'd bite off the gun barrel and suck up the sweet syrup, and chew the gun to your heart's content.
for crying out loud, there are video screens in SUV's now because Mommy can't be troubled to handle little Johnny in the back seat
How true. My mom's strategy in (back in the days before seatbelts and automatic door locks were used) was to toss me a butterscoth candy. After I would invariably choke on it, and survive only by being subjected to the kind of first aid violence that people used before the Heimlich Maneuver was en vogue, I would be too dazed and wiped out to make a commotion.
Two things:
All of the scheduled activities cut out a child's time for spontaneous play. They may want to play outside but don't have anyone to play with since nothing was scheduled or their friends are over-scheduled. You don't see kids strolling over to their friends houses uninvited anymore to play.
As far as educators are concerned, they go overboard trying to "fix" problems. So kids can't play tag, as the commenter said above and, in the case of Illinois, in the process of eliminating junk food to prevent obesity, they plan to ban whole milk.
As I said in a post, children aren't obese because of whole milk. They're obese from a lack of exercise and an over-consumption of nutritionally empty foods.
wow , so many comments its only 12:38 , anyway thanks helen ..
gina,
Sure, I had no idea a potato gun could hit such a nerve and have such symbolism!
Our country has an unhealthy fixation on safety. When I grew up the play grounds were made of concrete, steel and wood. You can't learn to be careful playing on plastic. You can only learn that being careless carries no consequences.
Again, folks, it comes down to Niven's Law: freedom times security equals a constant.
The more of one, the less of the other. It SCARY to be free. But I think it is far, far scarier to be perfectly secure in all ways.
"Eric Blair"
Like Kevin, I too enjoyed my childhood in the early '70s (late '60s). I can't begin to express how greatfull I am to have predated the death of childhood. I really believe it's criminal how kids are robbed of the freedom of play that execises the imagination and defines joy.My friends and I played countless hours, sometimes ranginging miles from home, with toy guns, stick swords, and other pretend instuments of death, wiping out legions of enemy combatants, yet somehow advoided even one real act of violence my entire life. I only learned here of the outlawing of tag....it makes me want to cry for the modern child.
It strikes me that the current trend towards swathing children in metaphorical bubble-wrap for saftey's sake might be connected with the removal of fathers from the seat of parental authority.
My mom hated fireworks but my dad loved them; every 4th of July we would each get a big bag of explosives to play with. My mon consented because she knew that while fer fears were well-founded they were also exaggerated; plus she trusted my dad's judgement. I singed my fingers a few times and my ears usuallyt rang for a few hours but I was as happy as a clam and so was my dad. My mom loved watching us enjoy something together as a family even if she stayed indoors for pert of the celebration.
Trusting a dad's judgement is about as far from the current conventional wisdom as you can get. (Except on the excellent "King of the Hill"!)
Nothing like postmodern freedom from all that Judeo-Christian moralism. Man, people used to always tell you not to do everything.
To Slocum 11:49:
I wouldn't be so quick to chalk the reduction in accidental deaths to our safety measures. I think a good chunk of it can be attributed to increased automobile safety (since MVAs are the #1 cause of death then and now) and medical advances (saving kids who would have died from the injuries in the 60s.)
I wonder what the longterm effect of "bubblewrap" must be. It seems we evolved in the context of mortal danger: days of hunting and gathering, punctuated by terrifying and often final moments of being hunted and perhaps caught. By present accounts of those who examine physical anthropological record, that's the context in which mankind evolved. If we continually take away more and more dangers and make ourselves more and more provident to succeeding generations, it seems we remove the selective pressure in favor of the intelligence required to meet and overcome dangers. Can trial lawyers be sued for having helped turn safety into an "attractive nuisance"? What can be done to put the generations back on track to becoming "stronger, deeper, more evil--more beautiful, too"?
The Instapundits mention potato guns, and next thing you know, Amazon is sold out.
(When Glenn mentioned that Lileks's latest was out, did you notice the 'others who bought this book also bought' section? It was all blogger-written and blogger-recommended books.)
Cool.
I have in my collection a fine pair of French flintlock pistols, very likely brought over by Lafayette for the Revolution.
How did I come upon these treasures, you may ask?
My grandfather was a house-mover for a time, and rescued them from some attic trash for my mother and her brothers to play "pirates" with.
Other family members once played in the streets with a bringback German Luger, sans magazine, and a similarly disabled .25 automatic.
My how times have changed.
I once went cousin-potting with a BB gun and got her smack-dab in her nether regions. Quite an accomplishment considering the distance and the fact that she was on a moving bicycle. However, no one's life was in peril except mine - but I could run faster.
Flounder said:
I remember the days when I didn't have to have my mommie buy me some cheap flimsy, wussie thing they advertised as a potato gun. No I heard about them by and by from the older kids who hung around and gave us wedgies. After piecing together enough info, we made our own out pvc pipe. You could even blow up a prairie dog with one. When those got boring we graduated to dry ice bombs. Ah those were the days...a few pieces of scrapwood could be fashioned into a nice ninja sword quite easily. This was before paintball: We used to buy a couple pounds of grapes and pull out the old slingshots. Had quite the battles.
If you want to be a real parent, maybe you would show your kids how to make their own weapons instead of buying into the wussification of America and exchanging your childrens joy for safety.
just found links to where i can buy the pot guns and they are cheap ..
I expect the bubble-wrap raising of children may have something to do with addiction to drugs, alcohol, and other cheap thrills..an attempt to feel something real through the wrapping.
I also suspect that those raised in extremely overprotected environments will often be unable to engage in the rational risk-taking which is necessary for true success in most careers.
The Russian general Suvarov is quoted as saying "Hard training, easy combat. Easy training, hard combat." I'm aftraid that those working to ensure "easy training" for America's kids are simultaneously ensuring "hard combat" for many of them.
Another damper on our children's playtime is the fear of litigation by other parents. A woman I know was sued by the parents of a child who showed up uninvited to a party with an ankle splint and landed in the hospital after falling off the trampoline she had been told not to use (the parent monitoring the tramp had gone to the bathroom). The parents won. Now this woman is scared to death to have any parties and her kids are paying the price for the other kid's irresponsible behavior.
You know, my daughter broke her wrist (badly) tripping over a curb in a city park while playing tag. We were waiting for a city Trail of Lights to open and ended up having to take her to the hospital ourselves because the emergency staff for the city were late and weren't there to tend to her. I guess we could have sued the city for something or banned our kids from playing tag, but we have done neither. Sometimes things just happen when kids get to playing.
Can't remember where I saw this originally, but it's very appropriate to this topic
http://trustedadvisor.typepad.com/TO_ALL_THE_KIDS_WHO_SURVIVED.doc
Also, best not bring that potato gun to the UK if you don't want to be arrested. I kid you not...
http://newswww.bbc.net.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/south_east/3192217.stm
and
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2-1385035-2,00.html
And it gets a worse...
See here, particularly the last five paras from "Mr Coode told the court"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/3044571.stm
Apparently the gun in question was bright orange and plastic. ...Hmm. Difficult to tell from the real thing then.
See here, 5 paras from the end: "In April, a father was jailed for waving a bright orange toy gun belonging to his six-year-old son at two youths who had been harassing his family."
http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=369914&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=&ct=5
And worse still...
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;sessionid=RV02H2BHS3K1FQFIQMGCM5OAVCBQUJVC?xml=/news/2005/04/14/nbutt14.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/04/14/ixhome.html
Naturally with all the guns gone, violent crime in England is at an all time low. This from The Times (of London)...
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,194412,00.jpg
and
http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prcs38.php
Oops!
Much lower in fact than almost every other country! (Ah. You've been sniffing that Home Office propaganda again, haven't you!)
Only one slight problem. This from the UN's International Crime Victimisation Survey.
http://www.minjust.nl:8080/b_organ/wodc/publications/08-icvs-h2.pdf
Well. It's nice to know England's top of the league for something!
As the father of two boys who attend a fairly-exclusive private school, I enjoy tweaking PC sensitivities.
My then 1st-grader had a school party, which I was fortunate enough to attend. Talking with mothers of other kids, one asked what to get my son for his upcoming birthday. I said words (to the effect) "no videos, please, we're very careful about what he kids watch. Oh, and no toy guns, please."
Several mothers instantly agreed that toy guns were bad, bad, violent toys, and complimented me on keeping them from my kids.
I told them they'd misunderstood, and called over my son. I asked him to tell the other moms what we'd done last weekend after he and his brother cleaned up their rooms.
He thought a moment, brightened, and said "Oh, we went SHOOTING! And this time I got all my shots in the target!"
To the (now-horrified) other parents, I explained that I was a competition shooter in a previous life, my wife have both been at different times firearms instructors, the whole family loves shooting, and that the only reason I preferred the boys not get toy guns was because (I believe) it encourages casual and possibly unsafe handling of fireams. I told them I saw nothing wrong with toy guns per se, but that since my boys shoot regularly, I simply didn't want them to pick up any bad habits.
I wonder it it has had anything to do with my not being invited to many other parents' parties :)
Thanks for the tips, Dr. H! Christmas is, as they say, in the bag. I followed the links on Gina's page and bought two potato guns. My aunt and cousin will love them.
Doc Helen ,
didnt realize these pot guns would cause such a stir , well I shouldn't be surprised though , at these cheap prices , everyone wants to get in on the cheap fun . thanks again for introducing it , if it werent for you , and if amazon hadnt run out , I would have never gone on the search ..
Thank you so much for blogging this. I immediately ordered four potato guns, and they came today. My cousins will be delighted--my aunts and uncles will hate me. :)
duane said: "Instead, we try to level the entire earth to eliminate all slopes, making it impossible to learn when they might be slippery, or how to hold footing on the grade" In the children's book "The Giver" by Lois Lowry they have a very controlling government who does exactly this.
kevin said: "Not only did I suck on candy cigarettes" I was born in the early 80s and I remember these being at one of the convenience stores.
anonymous 12:10 said: "My mom's strategy in (back in the days before seatbelts and automatic door locks were used) was to toss me a butterscoth candy. After I would invariably choke on it" When I was in elementary (don't know the exact age) I would swallow these candies virtually everytime I had one.
baillie: "I once went cousin-potting with a BB gun and got her smack-dab in her nether regions. Quite an accomplishment considering the distance and the fact that she was on a moving bicycle." When my dad was a kid he shot his sister between the eyes with a BB gun. I think it was to prevent her from telling on him to their parents!
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