[genon]

> Guns are, on average, not so useful / safe.

To be fair, I don't think many people are killed by toy guns. One thing I'll never forget from the land of Orwell is this from 15 years ago (virtually to the day, ironically enough):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2168430.stm

    Three 12-year-old children were arrested
    by five police officers who then fingerprinted
    them and took DNA samples, after the youngsters
    were seen playing with a toy gun.

[Jedd]

And equally, that wasn't my point -- I am not suggesting toy guns are responsible for many deaths (though there are stories of people using fake guns and being shot by the police 'in good faith').

It's the normalising of 'playing with guns' by handing over toy guns to children that I suspect is something a healthier society could happily eschew without losing much in the way of civil liberties.

In Australia accurate replicas are illegal IIRC - toy weapons are necessarily brightly coloured, to reduce the risk of being mistaken as a real weapon.

[reitanqild]

I actually somewhat agree when it comes to toy guns.

At the same time: if we go down this path then we should also ban action movies and descritions of war in literature (I grew up without tv and just read about it as a kid an I was as obsessed with war and fight against the Germans (i.e. nazis) as anyone where I came from.)

To borrow a phrase from you: it's the normalization of criminalization of things tuat worry me.