It's probably a good idea to plan these things ahead of time, but I had not crafted my gun policy before, low and behold, guns showed up in my house.

David: This is my shooter! I have a weapon. Phshoo! Pshoo! This is my gun shooter. etc. etc.

So, as David wanders around the house pointing sticks and making attack sounds, I've been thinking.

My policy on real guns goes without saying in my house and my culture: none, zippo, not even the remotest possibility. I don't own a gun. I have never owned a gun. I have never touched a gun. Same for John. Same for my parents. Same for, I assume, most people I know. The parent educator at school passed out a pamphlet on how to ask if there are guns in a household before letting your kids visit. I suppose I should learn to do that, but I really really think it's a non-issue with the kids we go to school with.

On toy guns, I think I'm going to take the same tack I did with princesses--I don't approve of them; I don't like what they stand for and all the social and cultural baggage they carry, especially what they imply about gender; I don't want to encourage them; but I'm not going to invest them with lots of energy and intrigue by banning them. I was talking to a friend about this today, and he said that was the Skinner policy of extinction--you don't reinforce a behavior. Hopefully, it then goes away.

At some point, when David has any inkling of pain, violence, and war, and how playing with guns normalizes our militaristic society, I might make a reasoned argument against them. But right now, they seem to be out expressing power, and I rather he went around shooting pretend ray guns, then actually hitting people.