Was I this stupid when I was 10?Follow

I just went out for my dinner run, grabed some takeout, and returned to my appartment. On the way back in, I noticed two kids, wearign dark colored winter clothers (at 5pm, pitch black outside, no real streetlights, etc) waving 2 toy guns around. the guns were about the size of a Desert eagle 50 cal, dark blue, with a little bit of orange trim. At first glance, I thought they were real guns. Then one of the stupid kids raises his gun, points it at my car, and proceeds to "shoot" me several times. The gun was up, aimed and in it's first "bang" motion before I got enough of a look at it to determine it was not a real gun. The kid was tall enough that he could pass for a really short teanager.

I slammed on my brakes, rolled down my window and yelled at the kid to never point a gun, even a fake one at a car, because he could never know who would decide it was a real gun and shoot back at him. Him and his friend ran off, and I came inside to type this.

Did I overreact here? When i was 10, if I had even pointed anything even closely resembling a gun at a car and pretended like I was shooting it while it was pitch black out, my parents would have kicked my ***, and rightly so. I remember a kid that did that same move to a cop around the time I was 12 or so. that kid ended up very dead, and the cop later committed suicide. Tonight I can really appriciate for the first time how that happened, and it scares me.

Full sized Guns should not be toys. I don't care if they sell well, or look cool, or if your kid really wants one. Buy them a toy tank or something instead. If a kid is interested in guns, Take them to a shooting range, teach them gun safety, and make damn sure they know and understand that if they ever treat a gun as a toy, you will break every bone in their body and leave them to rot somewhere out in the woods.

whoever the hell are their parents should be beaten.

i would've shot back.

I always carry my NES light pistol on me.

Darwin.. paging Darwin.

That is crazy. While my family does participate in airsoft gun wars, we do not do it somewhere people might mistake what is happening. All of us kids were taken out a young age and taught how to shoot the rifles and shot guns our father owned. We were taught gun safety and allowed to shoot a watermelon to see what it would do to a person. Never once did our parents have to worry about us playing with the guns.

Shortly before Mr.Katie went off to make sand castles, he bought me a small .22 hand gun. He took me out and taught me how to use it. When we have children it will remain locked inside its case. We keep the ammunition seperate from the guns we own. The ammunition is never in the same room as the guns.

I'm in TN. While no one in my family owns a gun, we are in the minority.

Pointing toy guns at passing cars is like initiation.

I actually had something like this happen to me 2 days ago. As I was driving out of my apartments onto a side street I saw a couple of teenagers (16 or 17) standing in the road, on my side.
As I was going down the hill another car was coming up and I came to a complete stop and the kids just stood there not even awknowledging the fact they were on a street. I honked my horn and they still ignored me.
The car passed and I went to the opposite lane and I looked in my rear view mirror, shaking my head in frustration and the kid flips me off.
I brake.
Back up like a bat out of hell.

"WHAT THE Hell is your problem standing in the middle of the road and then you flip me off for wanting to get by!?", I ask. Mind you, I know I should'nt of cursed but I was pissed. The kid makes a remark that he didn't see me and ended it with fu'ck you lady.

I controlled my temper pretty well but I did say, "I hope next time you aren't so lucky and someone runs your *** over, then maybe you will understand that you can't do what you did. You have no reason to do what you did and you better be glad that I am not some nut who would shoot your *** and not hesitate to laugh about it."

No respect for anyone/anything are these kids problems. The parents blame every outlet but themselves when it comes to why their kid did what he/she did.

It's MTV. It's video games. It's Judas Priest, Marilyn Manson or Eminems fault....obviously.
WTF ever. Stop being ignorant parents and raise your f'ucking kids. I am sure those are the same people who beam brightly and take the credit if they raise some brainiac rather than Tommy who's gang-banged every two bit ho and pawned his granney's tv.

Bah, the rant... It is a touchy subject, idiot kids going unsupervised. I don't care if it is pointing a fake gun at someone, in this day, you just don't do it.

It isn't the 80's anymore. It just isn't acceptable. You and I might know the difference between playing but things have changed. I don't think that kids know how to be kids anymore.

Edited, Sat Dec 3 23:20:23 2005 by Avela

I am not impying that we didn't do stupid things as children. However, kids today are at a bit of a disadvantage.

Halloween isn't the same. Kids aren't safe on the streets any day of the year.
Schools aren't the same. You **** a kid off, you risk getting your head blown off. ( I know that anyone can do this but violence in school is worse than ever.)

All I am saying is that today we should teach our kids what's right and wrong. Pointing a fake gun is one of those cases. I know I sound like a hypocrite but it just isn't what it use to be.
My lil brother (he was 9 at the time) got beat up by 3 kids because he was in our front yard pointing a water gun as they rode by on their bikes. No, he didn't spray them, he was too far away but it just goes to show what I've said all along. Some people don't know how to take it.

You have to admit that times have changed for the worse. It is sad. I wish that kids today knew how to really play. I am afraid that it just isn't so. I can't explain it though, it's just a deep sadness I feel that I know they won't experience.

The world's gone bad, I know it isn't the kids fault and I am aware that they cannot be supervised 24/7. I am also aware that there comes a point in time where good parent have to let their kids go and raise pray they raised them right.

If it wasn't for the fact that me and the other kids in my neighborhood/town/etc. ruined a lot of paintjobs with BB and pellet guns, I woulda suggested you run the pricks over, Kao.

I used to know a guy who grew up in the wilds of Indiana. As a youth, the sport over there was to go down by the railroad tracks and, when a train carrying automobiles would go buy, they'd use a .22 to plink at it.

In Australia where guns aren't given out like candy, I don't think we deal with these problems as much. The only thing i had to deal with a few weeks ago was when i was driving down the street, and some kid standing on the side of the road threatened to throw a cricketball at my car, like did the whole hand motion and what not. So i stopped, yelled at him, told him i knew where he lived. It scared the hell out of him and he ran away. I felt so tough. Sure, he was only 10 or so, but it pissed me off all the same. Not in the same league as some kid having pretending to fire a toy gun at you, but you get my drift.

One of my favorite things to do on the bus to elementary school was to get an action figure that I didn't care about anymore (or my friends would get one) and we'd dangle it outside the back window of the bus on a string, and we'd see what condition it was in by the time we got to school and reeled it in.

This lasted a few weeks until somebody followed the bus from I-95 all the way to school and told the bus driver what we were doing. Man, we were in a world of hurt after that one.

Kao, if it happened in your apartment complex, you might want to report "suspicious activity" to the managers. Be sure to mention that what *may* have been toy guns were involved, and that there were minors. If they don't follow up, they may find themselves with a liability issue.

Personally, I'd have punked them down.



I'll cut you some slack because I think you said you were in the UK. So I'll try to contain some of my utter disgust and disdain.

No. It WOULDN'T be a good idea to *NOW* to make it illegal to carry guns unless you were military or law enforcement.

Why, you may ask, oh neighbor-from-across-the-pond?

Because they're already out there. If you made it illegal to carry, then the only ones that'd have guns (other than law enforcement and military personnel) would be either be the people that already have illegal weapons and do illegal things with those illegal weapons, or those people who, in the privacy of their own home, have guns to ensure that no one enters their home with ill intent.

It's not the legal owners that cause problems. It's the ones that either own them illegally, use them illegally, or distribute them illegally.

Edited: Or stupid kids born from stupid parents who should not have been allowed to breed in the first place.



Edited, Sun Dec 4 22:10:29 2005 by Dalliance

Our end of summer fun was throwing rotten tomatoes at cars. Got chased by more than one angry motorist - never caught though.

Actually no one really needs standard guns anymore. There are too many other options. They ought to be unmade.

My group of hellions used to do this when we were around 7 to about 10. It was a yearly thing around the fourth of July. Till a couple of them got caught. I was the lucky one, I was visiting my Uncle on his farm that day.