Are Assault Weapons Toys Appropriate for Halloween Costumes?

A friend of mine went into a local pop-up store to look for a Halloween costume for her grandson. She was horrified to find a rack of toy assault weapons that are paired with various costumes for boys. She thought this inappropriate and insensitive. She asked me to inquire with the store with what their policy was regarding the role of lethal weapons as appropriate for children.

I confirmed the assault weapons display and asked a clerk if they thought it questionable.

The clerk said, “it did.” But the clerk was just working a low-wage, temporary job and was glad to have it.

I called MomsRising, an organization devoted to safety of children who asked me to find out the company so they could ask to have the toy removed. I talked to a manager who was, believe it or not, packing heat herself. The real thing.

She said she grew up in Georgia with guns, was an expert, and felt comfortable having her gun in the store after once being held up herself.

Listen to Ellie Kinnaird’s commentary here

No sense talking with someone who not only did not make policy, but was fine with having assault weapons as toys.

My opinions on the proliferation of guns that results in 32,000 gun deaths a year in the United States, one-third of them suicides, is well known. And I hear from gun advocates about protecting their second amendment rights.

Of course they don’t recognize the part of the Supreme Court decision that said, like most rights, the rights secured by the second amendment is not unlimited.

It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.

— Ellie Kinnaird