Academic

AMY ALKON: Squirt Gun Control? Why Not Just Outlaw Childhood? They?re working on it . . . . Ge?

By Glenn Reynolds

AMY ALKON: Squirt Gun Control? Why Not Just Outlaw Childhood? They’re working on it . . . .

Get a copy of The Dangerous Book For Boys before it’s banned!

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh emails:

I wonder whether the suggestion that squirt guns are being “outlawed” — even if somewhat hyperbolic — is quite apt. As I read the proposed statute, it simply means that children can’t buy the toy guns themselves, but need to have parents (or other adults) to buy them for them. (Do minors even buy a lot of toy guns themselves? I would think most toy gun users don’t do much of their own toy-buying.) I’m not sure the law is a good idea, but it seems pretty different from “outlawing.” And I think many readers’ first impression would be that there really is a ban on squirt guns, and not just a requirement that they be channeled through parents.

Well, when I was a kid I bought plenty of squirt guns and other toy guns myself, and I resent the effort to marginalize — or, to use the gun-controllers’ term, “denormalize” — toy guns. And, in fact, the sale of squirt guns to minors is outlawed under the bill.

MORE: James Taranto emails: “If squirt guns are outlawed, only outlaw squirts will have guns!”

Plus, he adds: “Squirt guns don’t squirt squirts, squirts squirt squirts!” Heh.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on February 01, 2011 (boomark / email).