The ONLY time we ever played with toy guns was when we wanted to pretend we were shooting bad guys (generally Germans or Russians), aliens, criminals, violent biker gangs, animals (usually bears or alligators, but occasionally mutated semi-intelligent apes - generally the day after a "Planet of the Apes" movie had come on TV), no-good city slickers who who had come to Hazard County to set up some sort of criminal enterprise (usually the day after "Dukes of Hazard" came on, although "guns" may be a stretch here, because we were usually using bow and arrows with TNT tied to the arrow-tips), killer robots, the KKK, or dirty military intelligence officials who were trying to capture the A-team. Yep, other than that, we wouldn't TOUCH a toy gun. Now, my mom new better than to let us have realistic toy guns - usually whatever firearms we could get our hands on came in some shade of orange or blue. Of course, a little black spray paint or some electrical tape generally took care of that. Although there was the Christmas when my Grandma found four black imitation M-16's that made kind of a R-R-R-R sound when you pulled the trigger. I can't remember ever being as excited about anything as 7-year old me was about that M-16. I slept with it like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story"

My nine-year old son could care less about toy guns. I tried buying him some "GI Joes" a few years ago, but he played with them for about 3 minutes then they disappeared in his closet forever. He'd rather play "Minecraft" for hours on end.

I'd rather have him out in the back yard shooting extremist terrorists with an orange M-4.