https://lilith.org/articles/teaching-gunhate/
Teaching Gunhate
An artist’s manifesto for protecting her grandsons.
I’ve noticed that as soon as a precious newborn baby boy is old enough to play games — maybe when he’s two or three — he might pick up a fork or a stick and point it at anyone (even his own grandma) and say “Bang-Bang you’re dead!”
So when my little grandson was excitedly tearing at the gift-wrapped present at his four-year-old birthday party and, lo and behold, there was his first gift — a shiny “toy” gun that, damn it, looked just like a real gun — I let out a shriek.
The noisy merriment became stone silence.
Mazal Tov. I sure got their attention. I then held my nose, like the gun was smelly, and retched like I was about to throw up. I didn’t care if the giver of this gift (who happened to be his well-meaning babysitter) was insulted; I’d beg for her forgiveness later, but now was the crucial time to make my point.
Well, get this: The next time I visited, that little angel said, “Nana, I hid the gun in my drawer so you won’t see it, because you don’t like guns.”
“Oh, what a good idea you had, Honey. And you’re right; Nana hates guns. And so do a lot of people.”
The kids catch on. When my first grandbaby lived near Central Park, I’d wheel him humming happily until we would pass a statue of some pompous general with a rifle or some “patriotic” soldier with a gun. One Sunday, as we passed the statue of the Pilgrim Fathers, I blurted out this question: Where are the Pilgrim Mommies? This brought an anxious frown to the darling’s sweet face like he was about to cry. “Besides,” I continued, “The Pilgrim fathers are wearing high socks. So who washed their socks if the mommies weren’t there?”
(Reader, if you think a toddler is too young to hear these laments, remember that Superman could get to their pure minds first.)