Highlands Reformed Church

Rev. Brian M. Abshire

As I write this, it is just a few days before Christmas. Last night, my wife laid out the presents she had bought for the kids. There were some clothes, a few games and several items that each of the children had put on their wish list. As I looked over the various gifts, I noticed that something was missing; NO toy guns!

Now I realize that we give presents in remembrance of the magi’s gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh (symbolic of the Messiah’s kingly reign and suffering death). And yes, technically speaking, guns as Christmas toys may seem incongruous for celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace. But still, every year when I was a kid, Momma always made sure we boys always had our own little arsenal on Christmas morning.

My best memories of childhood growing up in a small village in rural Maine was playing “guns” with the other kids, re-enacting great battles from American history (or at least those aspects of American history we gleaned from John Wayne movies). And throughout the year, those toy guns were used to save Davey Crockett at the Alamo (a little revisionism granted but we were kids after all!), hold off the Indians until the Calvary arrived, storm the beaches at Normandy, or fight the wily Japanese on un-named Pacific Islands. For us, those toy guns were a symbol of brave men, fighting against incredible odds, to resist tyranny, preserve freedom, protect their families, and make America a great nation.

But my wife explained that she couldn’t BUY any toy guns, there simply weren’t any in the toy stores. Not that I didn’t believer her or anything (but after all she IS British and doesn’t have quite the same emotional attachment to toy guns as we Americans do), but I did go on-line to do an exhaustive search for “toy guns.” No luck. If there is a company out there somewhere who still makes and markets toy guns I couldn’t find it. Now granted, there have been several horror stories about kids pointing realistic toy guns at police officers and getting shot (that’s why they started putting those ugly orange caps on the ends), and of course, some kids have used REAL guns to shoot themselves and others. Maybe toy manufacturers are concerned about liability or something?

But the reality is that guns today, both real ones and toy ones, are politically incorrect. The Powers that Be have determined that children shouldn’t play with toy guns. Play is an important part of a child’s development. Psychologists call this “modeling” wherein children learn to adopt the attitudes, behaviors and values of their peers and parents through play. Obviously then, “playing” with toy guns must be bad, because guns kill people!

Now if a Quaker family (or some other pacifist group) was behind the unofficial ban on toy guns, I could understand it. In their view, ANY taking of human life under ANY circumstances is morally wrong. But most Americans are NOT pacifists so what is the problem?

In effect, we have adopted the pagan fallacy of animism; that evil lurks in things, rather than people. Therefore demonizing guns (even toy ones) gives self-righteous crusaders some feeling of power. Ban toy guns and presto/chango, you banish the evil.

People today fear firearms of any sort because they rightly fear the consequences of living in a godless society. Modern Americans reject God and His law and then are horrified that their children grow up to become consistent with what has been hammered into them in twelve years at the State propaganda mills. They have been taught that there is no truth, no objective standard of justice, that they are just an evolved animal and therefore that there are no absolutes. Parents delegate the rearing of their children to the nanny state, the schools, the TV and video games and then wonder why some of them turn out to be killers. But no, it cannot be our lack of faith, our lack of personal morality, our lack of objective truth, our materialistic mentality or our adoption of ancient pagan heresies that causes the problem. It must be the toy guns!

There is no mystery about the origins of evil in human society; we have to look no further then the evil within our own hearts. God’s Law restricts and restrains that evil and in the past, American social and cultural structures reflected this belief. Today of course, we know so much better, we are so much further advanced; we have such greater wisdom than our fanatical religious ancestors had. And today we ban toy guns, while children commit murder with real ones…

Eventually, we did find some cheap, plastic pistols imported from China at the 99-cent store (nice trade, our President gives them nuclear weapons, and they give us toy guns!) so our boys’ Christmas will not entirely be gun-free. But I fear the larger problem will not go away. We flee from shadows but invite demons into our homes, and then wonder why monsters walk among us. The problem is NOT the toys we buy, but the values we impart (or fail to impart). The evil is not in the toys, but in our own hearts. And isn’t that why the Savior came into the world in the first place?