'Children's Toys - A Glimpse at the Future?'

These are children's 'toys' for sale on a street side, including not only a

yellow colored, futuristic gun, but pistols, semi-automatic and fully

automatic 'toy' replicas most looking very realistic. How do you feel

about what you see in this photo - just children's toys, or more? Your

ratings, critiques, and observations and remarks are invited and most

welcome. If you rate harshly, very critically, or wish to make an

observation, pleases submit a helpful and constructive comment; thank

you in advance for sharing your photographic knowledge to help

improve my photography. Enjoy (if you can)! John

For this photo, especially, your personal thoughts on social, political, philosophical, child-rearing and other issues are also invited.

How do you feel about this photo - what does it make you feel; OK?  When I was a kid I had such toys, and they were common, and I never shot anyone and although I once owned guns, I did not want them; they were 'insisted upon' and pushed on me by in-laws over my objections and long since have gone.  I never had shot one.

On the other hand, guns are necessary for law enforcement, certain security needs (yours?) and other needs.  Hunting is for longer weapons generally, but how about one of these for some deer hunting:

Those deer come at you in herds and you might be able to take home a whole dump truck load, all shot at once?

(and I've been shot, but I am not taking sides - despite what you may think.  In the USA, the Supreme Court recently said within limits citizens not under disability (felony, mentally ill, etc.) have a right to 'bear arms'.

Handguns are increasingly becoming common sights in the USA as the NRA and many gun owners push against laws that once were enforceable against guns and now are almost certainly Unconstitutional laws and therefore not enforceable.  Such as New York's and Chicago's prohibition against owning handguns.

I am interested in how YOU think about this and if you choose to say, your background and political system.

john

John (Crosley)

A purposely thought provoking image and one I'm sure that everyone will have an opinion on. For me the image conjurs up feelings of nostalgia, as I remember owning toy guns as a child and having the greatest time shooting everyone in sight, the postman, milkman and of course all of my sisters were prime targets. My best guns were metal Colt 45's which sometimes came with a cowboy hat, I practised being "quick on the draw" and me and my freinds would have endles arguements about who was fastest. None of these experiences made me want to grow up and shoot anyone, and despite experience with firearms (or maybe because of it) in the armed forces I still didn't want to shoot anyone. In the UK firearms are banned, and it is difficult to obtain a license for even a shotgun used for sporting purposes. This does not stop people being shot, although I am unsure of the statistics compared to that of the USA, wether it be a greater or smaller amount per head of population. What I conclude is that deprivation of toy guns won't stop some children growing up to be killers, just as deprivation of firearms in our society won't stop it either. It could be argued that banning firearms may reduce gun crime in the USA, I'm not so sure, owning a gun legally at least demands that the owner registers the weapon etc. An outright ban, opens up the possibilities of black market entrepreneurs supplying all the wrong people with weapons. Maybe they do already, but it's the scale and proportion of things that could get out of hand. After all as I have indicated, it hasn't stopped shootings in the UK.

Getting back to the image....and on a lighter note....the little rodent like creatures on the top shelf, eyeing the guns suspiciously made me smile, they probably suspect that they could be the next targets.

Cheers John Have a good day!

Alf

Great idea John,

You might include a few more child toys (a doll or two) to make it appear to be even more of a glimpse into a box of toys.

Your idea is GREAT, but this is a 'street' capture, and I had to deal with what was there, and including other toys was simply not possible to make the point and still  make a proper photograph. If I were 'arranging' a still life, as this,I could do much, much better.

john

John (Crosley)

it's all high tech, now.

You're right.

That's why I took this photo, no thinking too much of it, but as I saw it, I had increasing respect for the point it makes.

Just the photo makes the point, not me.

john

John (Crosley)

You wrote an  excellent comment, and about childhood experiences, they match many of those of us in the US who grew up in more 'innocent' and 'protected' times, though always under threat of nuclear holocaust, after the mid '50s when the Soviets stole the bomb secrets and made their own arsenal.  At one time I thought quite a bit about that, moving from NYC to the heart of Silicon Valley, two of the primmest civilian targets possible besides Washington, D.C.

I have been shot, as a bystander, medically evacuated from Viet Nam with sequel of a gunshot wound and guns have changed my life and incidentally the shooting so altered my life, I would not be the same person if not shot, and probably wouldn't recognize myself.

Long after released from extensive hospitalizations (two of three) my Volkswagen a friend and I were driving from Columbia, University, NYC to the West Coast where we both spent summers with our families, broke down.

We slept during daytime in our dump motel, waiting for work on the VW to start, tired from our journey, then went to a laundromat and played pinball on their sole machine at 2:00 a.m.

Cops came in, spied the hole in my jeans where the bullet had gone into my thigh and almost cost me my leg, but I was better then.  Dried blood was in rivulets, caked to my left ankle.

They were suspicious we'd been robbing somebody and I had been shot, but my shooting had a month or so before been national news and it was the only pair of jeans I had, now 'distressed'.

We managed to escape getting 'rum in' to the police station for the rest of our might.

I can remember answering the cops' questions about the hole and the dried blood all down my jeans.

Name son?

Ca-ching, ca-ching, as I played the pinball machine not even turning to him, 'John, John Crosley', and so on.

After a brief, initial glance to the two cops, I never looked at them again; just went on playing pinball, certain in my rectitude, having been an innocent victim, and finally invited them to call the jurisdiction where I as shot.

I learned then to retire that pair of jeans.

I am a little less sanguine on gun ownership, but the Scalia Constittuion is the Scalia Constitution, and almost all the other justices agreed.

So, it's guns, guns, guns.  We have a fine assortment of guns, and indeed shooting deaths, especially from family-owned guns of friends and near ones including relatives, far eclipses that of the UK.

There are 'illegal guns' but now soon they will just be 'legal'.  So the criminals (not convicted of felonies and therefore disabled for life from legal gun ownership -- with one exception -- all will have guns.

Gun rights people in some rural areas have taken to wearing them.

I came upon a chase from a shop owner with an automatic pistol after a shoplifter.  I think he might have killed him, once two years ago while driving across Nevada, i n the town of Winnermucca, which unfortunately did not photograph well (or I'd have posted it.)

Thanks for an interesting comment.

john

John (Crosley)

In a way, a painful confrontational photo. What the ... are we telling our kids?

Sure, I also had toyguns in my childhood and so far haven't become a psycho-killing maniac, but to see so many different types, models and such together makes you stop and think for a while. A telling picture.

For pure contrast, the line of pets that looks to be at the top would have been a nice inclusion, maybe. But not having seen the original location, it's hard to judge.

I'd argue that only the photo makes a point, though. Somebody took the photo and saw a story or point - as the creator one can not fully escape being the storyteller. This does not detract from the qualities of the photo, it adds to the profile of its creator rather (in my view).

I had a choice to include or not the plush toys - the rodents at top -- and decided only to give a 'taste' of their presence to 'prove' in a visual way these were 'toys' for sure, although the yellow, space-age raygun, lower right, tends to give it away for sure.

And that is a reason it was posted in color, so the yellow that gun would be prominent.

I've never shot a person or an animal, but I have been shot.

I savor the compliment implicity in your last paragraph.  I indeed saw a 'story' I could tell it with one photo.  It's a very economical way of communicating very large and controversial idea(s).

Otherwise, the photo has little 'artistic' merit other than its 'shock value' and its ability to engender a discussion of importance; in a way, sometimes writers write stories and illustrate them with a photo like this, but in its own way, this photo IS the story.  In any case, 'shock value' is an element of artistry . . . and aesthetics, which many people (and raters) don't know.

Thank you Wouter.

john

John (Crosley)

Girls play with dolls and boys play with guns. It is natural. Fortunately.

Did I see two of those tucked into your waistband/belt or whatever in a former biography photo?

john

John (Crosley)

I think so or similar.

you wrote:

 "Gun rights people in some rural areas have taken to wearing them."

Actually, today (not 20 years ago) it is legal to carry a concealed loaded weapon  in over 40 states and carry openly in over half the states. The states by law MUST issue a permit upon passing a background check, etc.

I grew up with guns. I learned respect and responsibility for a lethal weapon. Guns are not "bad" thing as your title implies.

If you own a handgun you will almost certainly never need to use it but if you do need one you will be very glad you have it. 

There have been some horrific "home invasions" etc.  in America which could have ended differently.

I was intended to be one of them when I was age 21 and stopped a slug from a .38 police special shot point blank that ended my career at Columbia College when I inadvertently got involved in a racial incident aboard a train headed for a curfewed Washington D.C. when a black man (mental patient) got in a fight with a white man, a fist fight ensued, and the black man decided his gun would resolve the matter

He shot the white man (and me in the process), thus ending my college career, leaving me for the time a cripple (and no film in my camera, which I was planning on buying in Washington D.C. so I could document the riots then taking place after the assassination of Martin Luther King.  I had used up my last film in Harlem the day after the riots there, documenting the aftermath of Harlem riots.

The black men was intending to use the gun in the riots.  A mental patient, there as no law then and even now no database that would have or now would prevent him from obtaining a pistol of that sort.

I know the Clutter family of 'In Cold Blood' from Truman Capote might have been better off had they been warned (I don't recall they were), if they had a gun and an opportunity to use it, and same with others, but such instances are not common.

I've owned guns and invariably I never fired them or knew how to handle them so I destroyed them or gave them away . . . . and didn't see their use except as the possible creators of family tragedy (suicide, accident, use in anger by someone in a moment of grave upset before they might cool off, etc.) and I understood that the availability of guns in my household was not a good thing.  Of course I lived in suburban America with a good police force.

I am not against responsible gun ownership, but feel it's a horrible burden we Americans bear, to which I can attest, that gun violence is a public health epidemic, even though it is getting a little less (except in schools).

And the homicide rate is getting greatly lower in almost every city and state (except Chicago), thank God.

America is stuck with this heritage, it's in the Constitution, and I doubt there's much that can be done about it.  The idea that guns are for self protection is one argument, but few are accosted, but there are sport hunters and lots of them and lots of target shooters who behave responsibly.

On the contrary, every week reveals story of  police shooting to death a kid under 12 who carried something like a cell phone (or toy gun) they mistook for threatening their life and so they riddled the kid with bullets.

It happens far too often, and it's a national tragedy.

Ukrainian police see a kid with a replica gun and they smile.  They know it's a toy.

And there's a proud parent nearby, practically beaming that their young boy has a toy he can have fun with (and not end up getting shot or in a national 'gun debate).

I'm not so much anti-gun as I'm 'against getting personally getting shot by people who are crazy, trigger-happy cops (even traffic stop cops have their hands on their holstered guns ready to pull their gun at a moment's notice) and against getting young kids shot because they 'LOOK LIKE' they MIGHT HAVE a weapon, when it often turns out they didn't even have a replica or anything more than a cell phone and an inability to understand English (or hearing loss).

Meir, my thoughts are not simplistic, and I understand all sides.  Gun ownership in the US is here to stay, but concealed carry is another issue, and it worries me greatly . . . . . people who are badly afflicted can pass background checks.

A friend of mine who was beaten almost to death on a regular basis by a stepfather until age 12 under the eye of his mother ended with both helpless to resist, because poppa owned a legal gun and was a law enforcement officer, and threatened to murder them both if they told.

He and mom escaped when after one horrific beating his hospitalization could not be explained away as 'he fell down the steps' or some such, as all before had been.  Medical care professionals then were less watchful/nowadays they watch for multiple fractures.

But poppa had a gun (and it was legal).  Disregard that he was 'law enforcement'.  He could have had a gun no matter what and successfully made those threats of gun homicide to enforce his fatherly prerogative to beat his son almost to death for such sleights as sitting at the piano and 'looking like a fairy' for attempting to play (which mom on the sly encouraged).  He and she escaped with a false identity.

Would make a great book, wouldn't it?

Maybe a movie?

I'm working on him.

john

It must be gratifying to know that 3 years after posting this image, it still inspires comment and debate. 

I take Meir's point Guns are not bad things in themselves, they have no evil intent, or unknown agenda's. They are purely mechanical devices designed to kill other humans or other animals effectively. 

But then as a comparison take Cocaine, as a substance it has no feelings or evil intent and it was sold openly over the counter quite legally and openly by Harrods of London reportedly up to the mid 1950's Yet there are few people that would argue that it causes no harm and should be considered legal now. 

The statistics that John has quoted are very worrying. And I think the problem of gun ownership is exacerbated by the fact that people seem to keep guns to protect themselves against a criminal fraternity that also seem to have ease of access to ownership........a kind of circle of circumstance that prevents anyone getting close to solving the problem. 

I can't see that this will be resolved any time soon either! 

The "right to bear arms" contingent seem to be a very strong force in the USA, and I'm really not sure what has to happen to change those views, god knows there have been enough cases of deranged people going on killing spree's!

The question of children's toys though, I feel is a quite separate matter. Children learn by play, so it's not incomprehensible that they learn about the danger of guns through this medium.

Great Impact image John! 

Alf 

For photographic merit in the 'artistic' sense, this has almost zero value at least judging from an aesthetic scale.

Judging from the scale of 'impact' however, it is somewhat stronger, as a rather long and growing longer string of comments seems to indicate.

You never know what happens when you bend over to take a photo of some toy guns offered by a street vendor in a box with broken sides.

I take a lot of such photos -- one-off photos that have no intrinsic meaning but coupled with other topics or current events might illustrate some important point.

It may be why people keep returning to my photos and the comments keep growing.  Goodness knows there are some great photos I've taken that hardly get any notice, yet a photo like this gets enormous notice and commentary.

Now, if I could just take a photo such as this in a more meaningful way -- but then again, I have three times, one with a boy firing a toy rifle (dry firing) about passersby), another of a boy leaning on his AK-47 toy, and a third of a boy face to camera showing off his new fancy space pistol.

All are more artistically compelling than this almost absurdly simple shot and at least one of them might succeed in a gallery (boy dry firing rifle above ignoring passersby heads) as pointed out to me by a world expert at one time who called that photo 'fantastic' as he curated it . . . and I said 'are you certain' skeptically, and of course, he was right and now I am certain.

I love it that you are watching what is written here, and commenting with your well thought out comments.

john

John (Crosley)

Your title more than implies that toy guns portend a future wave of gun violence. That is just not true.

You state that concealed carry worries you because some slip through the cracks in the background checks. So let's eliminate concealed carry permits and then we won't need background checks??

Concealed carry worries you? Criminals don't apply for concealed carry permits.

Concealed carry worries you? There is no evidence that gun violence increased when states passed laws allowing concealed carry. The evidence that gun violence actually decreased due to the law is controversial.

If a guy storms into a restaurant shouting racial stuff and shooting customers, then you would hope there are some customers around who were carrying concealed. Concealed carry is for your protection also whether you do or not.

If a disgruntled who was fired last week enters your work place and starts shooting employees  then you will hope that some of your coworkers are carrying concealed. Concealed carry is for your protection also whether you do or not.

Likewise the 2011 Norway Massacre would have turned out different before 77 people were slaughtered.  

As for me as a parent; boys generally like guns period. So check out my kid. When he is about 8 and if he is stable buy him a BB gun; teach him gun safety and take him out and shoot bottles and tin cans. Take him fishing too.

And none of this has anything to do with toy guns.

I was awakened, then shot by a mental patient who legally bought a gun, used the gun to shoot another man he picked a fight with and the same bullet ended (for five years) my college career.

Because it was 'concealed' no one had a chance to take action against him.

I get your points, and many of them have some validity -- the arguments are not entirely clear cut for any point, except that in the United States just far too many people die of guns, whether self-inflicted, through sudden arguments, or through long though out intentions.

I have a dog in this fight - a concealed gun changed my life when its bullet hit me and nearly destroyed my leg and stopped my schooling my senior year (I went to Viet Nam that following summer, like a fool, armed only with a camera -- youths are invincible!).

This is pointed as a point of discussion.  I have my point of view; you have yours; Alf Bailey has his and so many others have theirs.

There may never be agreement.  Admittedly many criminals Never seek concealed carry permits, but SOME ACTUALLY DO and they get arrested when they do, and just the sheer number of those arrested for handgun permits and concealed permits who are felons suggests that major problems exist in their thinking.  Whatta ya mean I can't have a gun?  I'm a felon, but I asked for permission to conceal it, and you're arresting me now?  But I TOLD you I have a gun.  Some criminals don't think straight.

Same with people whose TSA inspected luggage reveals handguns, reportedly every year in the hundreds or thousands (oh, I grabbed the wrong suitcase, is a common excuse when they find themselves in hot water for trying to take a loaded weapon on board a plane.)

Pilots now can do that, but who wants to see gunfire on airplanes with the risk of decompression (admittedly there may be worse consequences than what we all saw in Goldfinger.)

For me, no guns in the house. For you, I saw two handguns, and now you talk of a third.

If I lived in Israel, surrounded by hating, armed Arabs firing daily rockets, I might have a quite different attitude.

As a one-time attorney, I interviewed hundreds of people who were mentally ill enough to be labeled 'crazy' but who were untreated ever and would have qualified for not only a handgun permit but a concealed carry permit.

That's my view; you have yours and I respect that yours is honestly obtained and maintained.

john

John (Crosley)

Yes, there are 30,000 gun deaths annually in the U.S., the majority which are self inflicted (I can search for that reference) -which have nothing to do with carry permits.

However 644,966 (average) handguns are used annually for self-defence in America or roughly once every 48 seconds" -Heritage Foundation, a conservation Washington DC 'Think Tank' group. (which ought to save lives of some "good guys" and eliminate some "bad guys".

Compare 644,000 with 30,000.

As of 2013 all 50 states (to my knowledge) permit concealed and/or open carry with and/or without permits. I think Il was the last to turnover and my niece in Il carries a handgun.

You are privileged to decline to own a handgun  if you so choose and in your case a handgun could prove to be a liability not an advantage.

Again I will say that there is no link between right-to-carry laws and increases in crime (Washington Post 2012). If you present facts with references to support your position I will rethink my position.