Guns Are Not Us : Two top firms say they’ll stop ordering realistic toy firearms

Like it or not, many American youngsters have idled away many a late afternoon playing games like cops-and-robbers with toy guns. For a time the only intrusion of reality into such good-guy bad-guy adventures was the unmistakable call from a parent around dinner time.

Increasingly, however, these childhood shoot-’em-up fantasies are being shattered by the real thing. Earlier this year in New York City, Nicholas Heyward Jr., a 13-year-old straight-A student, was shot and killed by a housing-project police officer when a toy gun the boy was playing with was mistaken for the real thing. Another boy, Jamiel Johnson, 16, was wounded on the same day in the same city under much the same circumstances.

These tragic incidents, and others, have appropriately prompted two retail toy firms, Toys R Us and Kay-Bee Toy Stores, to ban realistic-looking firearms. Toys R Us, the nation’s largest toy chain, announced last week it will stop ordering realistic toy firearms. Kay-Bee Toys says it will remove the guns from shelves and destroy them.

These sensible moves, which the firms made voluntarily, could help save lives. What’s more, their actions go further than current federal law, which requires only that “look-alike” toy firearms be affixed with a bright orange plug. As experience has shown, these colored seals can be removed or simply painted over.

Toy gun sales make up 2% of retail toy sales, which amounts to about $237 million a year. Some toy gun manufacturers take issue with the ban and wonder why big chains are targeting guns when there are plenty of other toys, like video-games, that contain graphic depictions of violence.

That’s true. Still, it’s highly unlikely that a child would be gunned down in the safety of his or her home playing Mortal Kombat. And kids still have options. Stores will continue to stock water guns and bold-colored guns that are clearly identifiable as toys.

In the meantime, the chances that another child will die because a toy gun is mistaken for a real one will be lessened.