Like so many things in our overprotective and paranoid society today, a fun game has been ruined by people who think that Nerf guns == real bullet-and-gunpowder guns. Actually, the people that complained about it are probably the same people who think that all guns today are AK-47s that spew a thousand bullets a minute that heat-seek into the nearest innocent child...(if I feel like it at some point I may look through the absurdities of many of the gun control laws, particularly the 'Assault' Weapons ban that expired a couple years ago.
Anywho, back to the story:
But these days, bright plastic Nerf guns bring panicked phone calls to campus officials. Last fall the game freaked out several students and parents, who feared that the Nerf shooters might be on real rampages.Um...you mean Nerf guns don't already look nothing like real weapons? Have you EVER seen a bright yellow and red rifle or handgun? You know...Nerf guns are about as similar to real guns as marshmallows are to real grenades...how long do you think before some paranoid parent witnesses the marshmallow chucking and goes screaming to the administration about those damn kids having fun.
Administrators called in the game's organizers and asked whether they could replace the fake guns with something that looked less like a weapon. The compromise: Players now throw marshmallows.
What has happened to our society? Are we really that afraid of getting a little dirty and hurt? Everytime I pass the parks I used to go to as a kid, I lament the playground equipment I used to climb and play on. Its all been replaced with this brightly colored, lets-cram-as-much-as-we-can-into-a-tiny-space prefabricated equipment that just plain isn't fun. The school across the street from my house, my elementary school, no longer has swings. What?!? What self-respecting playground doesn't have something as simple as a swing?
I swear, we're turning into a culture of weakness and inability to fend for ourselves, always looking for our mother (a.k.a. the government, whether national, state, or a school administration) to come protect us from all the scary things in the world. Don't you dare trust the government to always come help you. A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have
Grow up. I can't say I'll ever have faith in the government or other people in general to do the right thing. You can only trust yourself, and perhaps a few others you know well.
One last thing from the article: "Colleges are kind of perfect for this sort of thing. They're closed, well-defined spaces, and people living on them have a whole lot of free time." HA. Maybe your college
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