Image made by me, with free-use images from Pixabay.
Hello, this post will be a bit different from what I usually do and I ask you to please read it with an open mind and calmly before making any comments.
Having said that, I will put you in context, in my country Venezuela a general ban on all war games and articles was decreed in 2010, with the intention of reducing the rate of violence and crime that plagued the country at that time. (And it's not that now it doesn't, it's just that it was worse before)
That led not only to the fact that no one could carry firearms, but also the famous, fun and somewhat dangerous pellet guns left the market. They are basically plastic weapons, very cheap and relatively safe, that looked similar to their real counterparts, let's say. They used to be found in the municipal markets and in the fairs that were held on holidays.
I tell you, the violence did not stop... in fact the rate of violence and crime continued to rise, until everything stabilized naturally, like a kind of climatic phenomenon that hit us and eventually we recovered, although the laws were not removed, It is still illegal to own a war-themed toy gun.
Now here's my point, I was watching videos of a sport called AirSoft, which is basically a shooting game with these prohibited weapons (THEY ARE TOYS) in which two or more teams battle each other simply for fun or to fulfill established missions with previously, capture the flag, protect the base, recover hostages and other game modes.
I started researching this sport and it turns out that the weapons used are better elaborate replicas, although like our old toy weapons, they shoot plastic pellets at a speed incapable of harming any player. And you will ask yourself, are you upset because you cannot practice the sport? And the answer is yes, although it is deeper than that.
Here is an analogy, in the United States there is a law that applies to fighters trained in any combat discipline, which basically says that in case of conflict, the court will judge their damages as if they had carried a weapon, even if they had not carried. This is because those people, with their training, are the weapon.
And here is my dilemma, karate for example, cannot be prohibited because its basic philosophy is to promote peace and that its training should only be applied in extreme situations, although that does not mean that a person cannot beat someone to death if you so wish.
What I want to get to and finally, is that perhaps by controlling the use of war toys and seeing it as the sport that it is, we could make our teenagers aware of the correct use of firearms, all through a game. Much better than leaving them alone playing GTA right?
Now last thing, of the deaths recorded by firearms, more than half are accidental. Many in criminal acts yes, but accidental after all. Now I wonder and I ask you, are NERF guns not warlike? What is recreated in your games? And even so, we give them to our little ones and we don't worry about teaching them rules and regulations about it, since they couldn't harm anyone, right?