A Violent World
We live in a world where we see violence every day, in the news, on television, and sometimes, in the streets. Video games provide children with an opportunity to act out violence through their characters and life seems to become less valuable. Manufacturers using “business ethics” as an excuse, manufacture all kinds of weapons look-alikes and sell them to kids who, as all kids do, play out their imaginations.
When I was a kid, we played with toy guns (says a lot about a normalized society!), because toy guns did not look like the ones that are considered “toys” today. The ones we used were much smaller than real guns and they looked like toys; isn’t that the point of toys?
The Real World
Now we go into the real world where violence often ends in injury and death. Police are tasked with trying to maintain law and order yet little seems to be done to help them. Are there cases of excessive violence? Yes. Are there cases where race stereotypes end in a victim’s death? Yes. Are there justified cases of shooting deaths in the line of duty? Of course. Only a person impervious to the reality of a society based on -isms could ignore it.
The point of this brief post is to point out the lack of social responsibility for the sake of profit that continues to be exhibited by toy manufacturers who sell weapons replicas that anyone can buy and give to kids, replicas that anyone under pressure in a dark alley would not be able to distinguish from the real thing. If you have never had a real weapon pointed at your face, you cannot appreciate the state of a police officer having one pointed in her or his face.