Nerf guns make for some entertaining in-house battles. Safe for people and walls.
For the record, we don't permit point-blank shots like this. And yes, eye protection is required.
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When we let politics trump science, people are needlessly put in harm's way. http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/self-censoring-fears...
I worked one place that had an arsenal of Nerf products in the hall closet. IT vs QA was a regular thing.
ReplyDeleteSy Bernot Same. Secret Santa each year had a lot of Nerf guns being bought, just to keep the arsenal well stocked :)
ReplyDeleteAre you participating in the battles yourself or is it just the kids?
ReplyDeletePatrik Hanson Oh, rest assured I'm joining in. >:-D
ReplyDeleteLike in paintball, there's a mercy rule. If you can touch the other person with the tip of your barrel, they are considered "tagged".
ReplyDeleteHere there's moral dilemma to Nerf. It's extremely popular with our kids but they use terms like "bullet" and "kill you" when playing. I've tried to steer them toward more appropriate language such as "dart" and "tagged" but from playing enough video games, Nerf is real life Team Fortress so they end up using the same terminology. Which would be fine if it was just the family. But it's also visiting families and in a country with no military and many migrants who moved here specifically because of that, you sometimes end up with awkward situations.
That said, I've relented to just letting them play. They know my feelings and try to avoid "head shots" and "killing sprees", however just seeing them run around means I pull out my Rebelle hold out and play along. Well, it's Mackenzie's, but the loading is too much pull for her so she prefers a different one. So pink/purple hold out for me!
We’re similar John Lewis . I try to steer away from those terms, but it doesn’t always work. But I’m strict about no head shots or the Nerfs get a timeout.
ReplyDeleteWe had a strict “no-projectile weapons” policy against other humans, so no nerf wars for our kids. No pointing guns at something you don’t intend to kill, whether it is a real gun, a nerf gun, or your fingers with a “pew-pew” sound effect. On the other hand, they got safety training and time at range with archery and with Real Guns. And they were just fine with limiting their internecine warfare to hand-to-hand combat using PVC pipes covered in foam insulation and duct tape (“boffers”).
ReplyDeleteI've had a couple of workplaces that were big on Nerf. The first was a consulting company where new hires were issued a new Nerf blaster within a couple weeks of starting - I came in one morning, and one was there on my desk. From time to time, the Project Management Office would march to war against the development staff. (I had a shield, which often resulted in me being on the front line.)
ReplyDeleteI've also worked for a subsidiary of Hasbro... which owns Nerf. I went into a meeting about a week in, and the Director pulled a Nerf assault rifle from the chair she was going to sit down in, pushed it into my arms, and said "Do something with this." It's still in my living room. The developer pit on the second floor was a virtual free-fire zone.
Aaron McLin
ReplyDeleteBrian Holt Hawthorne I appreciate your position. As someone who was trained on several firearms and is fairly proficient firing a gun (and archery, FTR), personally, I don't see Nerf guns the same way I see real guns just like I don't see 1/16-scale RC cars the same way I see actual cars. I'm not saying that to argue, simply to explain my position, which I don't expect you to adopt or agree with. :-)
ReplyDeleteQuick question: Does your ban extend to water pistols and super soakers? What about water balloons (i.e., water grenades)?
Craig Froehle Just to add a bit from my perspective. I was taught as a child never to point a gun at anyone, even a toy gun. It's ingrained. I learned to let that go when in my early twenties I joined a PaintBall team.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm conflicted as to how to teach it. We had a rule that you could aim at people, then my wife demanded a change and it become "no headshots". I'm not sure how they play now, because the cats keep eating the darts they don't collect.
John Lewis I played Cowboys & Indians, then Army Men pretty extensively as a tot in the early 70s. Both of those involved shooting the other guys. Was pretty much the norm...those and Hot Wheels were the only games we played in the neigborhood. I don't personally own any actual guns and don't intend to, which is why I'm pretty confident that Nerf guns and real guns are two quite different categories of things in my head.
ReplyDeleteCraig Froehle We did extend the ban to water pistols and super soakers. Although not projectile weapons per se, they are designed to look like guns and to be used like guns. On the other hand, garden hoses, water balloons, and other water delivery devices were kosher.
ReplyDeleteI should point out that we didn’t have a strict ban. The deal was that if the kids wanted to learn to shoot real guns, they had to learn and internalize gun safety rules, including if it looks like a gun assume it is a gun, and never point a gun at something unless you intend to kill it. We made it clear that if they would rather play with nerf guns and water pistols, that was their choice, but doing so would take away the option of learning to shoot real guns.
Brian Holt Hawthorne said: "We made it clear that if they would rather play with nerf guns and water pistols, that was their choice, but doing so would take away the option of learning to shoot real guns."
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't understand that approach. Nerf guns are toys. Real guns are tools. To me, it sounds like telling them they won't be allowed to learn how to use a machete (a potentially deadly tool) if they choose to play with a toy sword. Why either/or? Aren't you preventing them from having a potentially useful experience either way they choose? I did both and I think I turned out pretty respectful of weapons while still being able to enjoy the recreation of toys.
Craig Froehle I can't speak for him, but for me there was a range, from actual fire arms, pellet guns, bb guns, dart guns, nerf, and water pistols. It's a scale.
ReplyDeleteDon't mistake nerf as just advanced tag, kids are pretending to shoot each other with guns. Maybe a teaching moment, no one lives, no one wins all the time, etc.
Nerf, however, is clearly about simulated combat.
In that same sense, you have to treat any gun with the respect you treat a loaded, real firearm.
Why?
Police are trained to treat toy guns like real weapons.
Here is why:
google.com - real guns made to look like toys - Buscar con Google
Craig Froehle In many ways it was the result of inter parental negotiation. My wife did not grow up around guns (except for the ones her uncle the small-time mobster kept in his trunk.) I grew up learning to shoot.
ReplyDeleteWe settled on not having any guns in the house while the kids were little, and only bringing guns (in a locked cabinet) into the house when the kids had shown they were old enough to understand gun safety. This was a true compromise for both of us, as she went into it never wanting guns in the house and I wanted to continue to at least target shoot. So, I gave up shooting until the kids were older and she gave up her absolute objection.
As the kids grew, everyone in the family took various gun safety classes, including my wife. Compromise is the heart of a successful relationship.
As someone who remembers when toy guns began to look less real in a big way, the issue at the time wasn't that police learned to treat toy guns as real. It was that they started to treat younger and younger people as real threats. There was a time when we could run around the neighborhood into the small hours of the night playing with guns that looked very real - the orange tips were recessed into the end of the barrel, so you had to be in front of the gun to see it. I was stopped with a toy gun once. Police officers were more chill at the time - they didn't think that I was actually packing. That ended in the late 1980s, when, as I recall, there were some shootings of kids because an officer didn't immediately recognize a toy as a toy. So by the time I graduated college, bright primary colors were all the rage. It didn't really catch on, because they still looked a lot like the real thing, especially in low light.
ReplyDeleteBut the other thing was that because battery-powered water pistols that were shaped like the real thing were falling out of favor, Larami, one of the primary makers of realistic looking toys instead turned to Super Soakers (introduced in 1989), which had much better performance than their battery-powered counterparts.