1 Family Photo: Toy Guns

Lawrence's Fireball Thrower vs Calvin's Fireball Extinguisher

Guns. I think I need to talk to the kids about guns.

Calvin and Lawrence started watching this YouTube show called Blaze and AJ. It's not the worst kid thing on YouTube - I'm still deciding where I draw my lines on content standards and what battles I want to fight. Blaze and AJ are monster trucks, and also superheroes, and also sometimes educational, but also sometimes they shoot fireballs or lasers for reasons I don't quite get.

Calvin and Lawrence invented some toys (above) to act out the show.

I grew up in a house without guns. But guns were still part of my kid culture: I played cops and robbers, I watched cowboys and Indians on TV, I had a metal cap gun with a holster, squirt guns, nerf guns, super soakers.

When I was 5, my dad taught me to play Montana Draw - this game he learned from a TV show when he was a kid. We'd crawl on the floor and throw rolled up socks at each other in a simulated gunfight - basically laser tag from before there were lasers. It was a lot of fun.

I grew up in a house without guns, but my family wasn't anti-gun.

As a kid, I knew my dad had been in the Marine Corps long before I was born. I knew he'd been in combat. I knew that meant he'd fired his gun. That it might have saved his life.

When I was about 10, a teacher visiting from Japan wanted to know more about American gun culture. My dad took us to a shooting range, where they loaned us a rifle. I don't know if my dad had ever been to that range before - I'd never heard him talk about shooting - but the holes on his target clustered pretty tightly.

There's this scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Jem and Scout are shocked to discover their bookish dad Atticus is a crack shot. "Yeah, dads are like that," I thought when I read it.

As a teen, my church took us to Men's Camp in the summers. A lot of it was old guys telling us young guys not to have sex. And some of it was old guys telling us young guys not to make the same mistakes they had, which was often sex. We also shot a lot of guns.

That's where I learned to respect guns: treat every gun as if it's loaded, never point a gun at something you don't want to kill, trigger discipline, know your target and what's behind it.

I once took Luana on a date to a gun simulation training class. I did this because I thought it would be like laser tag. And I did this because there was a Groupon.

Gun simulation training class was more like a golf simulator for people who think their concealed carry permit will one day make them heroes in line at a Chipotle.

Luana and I stood side-by-side to defend ourselves with simulated handguns while stepping through an interactive movie. They put an electric shocker on me (which was optional) to make things "feel more realistic if a bad guy got you".

It was very much not like laser tag.

Before any bad guys appeared, I got electrocuted.

What happened was Luana saw some movement on her left, got startled, and unloaded her clip at the movement.

I was on her left. I was the movement. We were standing side-by-side. Our shoulders were literally touching (before she pivoted and filled me with simulation bullet holes). The guy running the simulation thought this was so funny he stopped the whole class so everyone could watch our simulated self-defense performance recording.

I think about this a lot when I think about us not having a gun in the house.

So that's my experience with guns.

At Target this week, I saw a college kid with a cartful of X-shot Instanity Mad Mega Barrel Blasters. They looked fun. I briefly wished I lived in a frat house full of X-shot Insanity Mad Mega Barrel Blasters. I realized I could buy 4 of them and turn where we live into that frat house, but it didn't seem like the right time.

Are guns toys? Are they tools? Something else?

I don't know when or what I'll to say to Calvin and Lawrence. I'll have to say something eventually.

1 Dad Joke: Thought Guns

Hank: The NRA is a Washington DC based organization.
Are you telling me you support Washington DC?

Dale: That's a thinker...

Highlights: Real Guns

What I Learned About Being a Man From My Dad by Daniel Schmachtenberger

[H]e was standing in a parking lot smoking a cigarette when gunshots were fired in one of the stores. Everyone ducked or ran the other way. My dad ran straight towards the sound of the gunshots...When he told me about running towards the gunshots, he assumed the shooter was still alive but said he knew he could keep his body moving through enough bullets to take the shooter out and prevent anyone else from getting hurt. He did this for strangers.

• See the job, do the job, stay out of the misery

• If you ever start a fight, Ill kick your ass. If someone is being hurt and you don’t protect them, Ill kick your ass.

• The side of right always wins. Be on the side of right and don’t worry about the odds.

• Don’t let fear of pain or death keep you from doing the right thing.

The Taliban Were Afghanistan's Real Modernizers by Tanner Greer

The goal was less punishment than parity: feuds would end when both sides had equal red in their ledger.

...

Afghan poetry of that era lionizes battle with bolt-action rifles. This was the weapon of choice for feuding tribesmen. Each shot of a bolt-action rifle involved carefully aiming the gun and deliberately pulling its trigger. Feuding was less about violence than balance: bolt-action heroics did not just give young men the chance to gain renown, but also allowed tribal councils to keep the score.

Machine guns are not made for keeping score.

Needless Battle Caused by Uncommon Language by John Ezard

His men were outnumbered eight to one, stranded on every side by human waves of Chinese Communist infantry attackers at the height of the Korean war.

But when the British brigadier reported the position to his American superior in the United Nations joint command, he did so with classic and -as it turned out - lethal British understatement.

"Things are a bit sticky, sir," Brig Tom Brodie of the Gloucestershire Regiment told General Robert H Soule, intending to convey that they were in extreme difficulty.

But Gen Soule understood this to mean "We're having a bit of rough and tumble but we're holding the line". Oh good, the general decided, no need to reinforce or withdraw them, not yet anyway.

...

With no extra support promised, the colonel in charge of the Gloucesters fell back to a hill overlooking the river, where they made their stand. For four days, mostly without sleep, they held off 30,000 Chinese troops trying to surge across the river, killing 10,000 of them with Bren gun fire.

When they tried to withdraw, they were too late. More than 500 of them were captured and spent years in Chinese camps. Fifty-nine were killed or missing. Only 39 escaped. Two soldiers were awarded Victoria crosses for bravery.

Their feat was credited with saving Seoul, the south Korean capital, from capture. But yesterday the official historian of the war, General Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley, said Seoul probably would not have been endangered if the men had been withdrawn earlier, and they would not have been cut off or captured.

Sir Anthony, now 77, a former Nato commander-in-chief, was himself captured at Imjin as a young adjutant to the Gloucesters. He said a US officer - unlike Brig Brodie - would have known how to make Gen Soule understand, by using the phrase "Sir, there is all hell breaking loose here".

Sir Anthony said: "The two nations spoke military [language] in a slightly different way. It's certainly a good example of the old saying about Britain and the US as two nations divided by a common language."

...

The programme says: "Any hopes of relief were dashed by an American misunderstanding of British understatement."

Baghdad Country Club by Joshuah Bearman

A History of occupied Iraq's #1 drinking spot

BAGHDAD COUNTRY CLUB NO GUNS, NO AMMUNITION, NO GRENADES, NO FLASH BANGS, NO KNIVES— NO EXCEPTIONS!

How to Make a Marshmallow Gun from PVC Pipe by Art of Manliness