Squirt Guns at School

They should absolutely NOT be allowed. As someone who hates guns and does not allow my children to play with them, I would be LIVID if they received them in goody bags from school.

My son has been disciplined for: building Legos into the shape of a gun, and for chewing his sandwich into a gun shape.

No guns of any kind.

No way...our school permits NO toys or props that look like weapons AT ALL. Even if it's obviously a neon green squirt gun!

We have gotten more intolerant of guns and yet the school shootings occurrences go UP!!

Perhaps we should also ban forks because they make people fat!!

We need to look at the reason why kids are going insane. And it's not because of guns. Besides, the more you ban something the more enticing it becomes.

I think we need to look at what behavior in a person is SANE and what is INSANE. Little girls & boys have always shot each other with fake lasers, or squirt guns, or even more dangerous things like disc guns or cap guns. Not a summer went by when we didn't play the very un-PC game of "cowboys and Indians." Now I guess you'd have to call it "Western People and Native Americans." We were very sane youth. We grew up to be very sane adults with families. All of us.

Interrupting a child's play by telling them that their imagination is dangerous, that what they are imagining is wrong, and that they cannot pretend to shoot someone with a gun made out of a stick is INSANE. It's invalidation to the imagination of a child.

If no one imagined weapons then we'd have very few movies. No Avengers, no superheroes. No Star Wars, No Harry Potter. No Hunger Games, no Twilight. No Snow White, no Beauty and the Beast. If I had to rip every DVD off my shelf that had a weapon in it I would be stuck with what, two chick flicks? How insane would that be?

That being said, don't put any type of weapon in anything for school.

There are many reasons we homeschool. And running around shooting each other with Nerf guns to let off some steam is one of them...

Oh yes... can't do it. No way no how. *smh*

I find it both amusing and sad that so many moms are so vehemently opposed to the clean fun of squirt guns. When my son was a baby, I too, thought "I won't buy him toy guns to play with." Of course, I didn't have to. He MADE them himself out of whatever he could find. The first time he was "shooting" at something was with a drinking straw. The next was with a crooked stick he found on the ground. Should those be banned too?
Needless to say, I quickly decided that the "no toy guns" idea was a waste of energy.
I simply taught him not to point any kind of gun at a person or animal. Nerf guns are for target shooting or stuffed animals. You can put an eye out with those things! They've had water guns for the pool for YEARS. I even let them play pirates on rafts in the pool--- GASP.
They understand the difference between PLAY and actual violence toward others.

I am very careful however, not to ever allow any "toy" that LOOKS real. In fact, I don't think they even allow them to be manufactured anymore. Hence all the squirt guns being neon colors and not black or silver. Even plastic "toy" guns are bright green or something....

Keep your guns at home, if you want them there.

I don't mind fish shaped squirters but if it even looks like a toy gun, i don't want it coming home with me.

Nice ofyou to send goodie bags.

as for the productions they do have certain props theyare allowed, and do say certain swear words depending on the show. We see alot of different preformances and it took me a while to get used to teenagers "acting"
--drunk like ms hanigan in Annie just for one.

I do NOT allow my son to play with guns AT ALL. I would be very unhappy if a squirt gun was given to him at a school event. Call me crazy, but I just don't think pretending to shoot our friends with a gun should be a fun game.

We DO have lots of water squirters at our house, which we love... I just don't see why we would want to play with a toy designed to pretend the water is a bullet. We have super fun, plain old, squiters that use a push rather than a trigger to spray the water and prefer those.

I don't think this has anything to do with being old. Guns have NEVER been allowed in our house and weren't when I was growing up. Maybe because I grew up in a crazy, hippy, Bay Area town, but that was our reality. We didn't play shooting people for fun. My son is a little brown boy with dreadlocks; it's in his best interest to STAY scared of guns! :-/

My grandson took pictures of guns to school and was reprimanded. No guns are allowed. It does seem odd but at the same time I understand it. It's much easier to enforce with no guns. If you allow some and not others you're faced with distinguishing which is OK and which isn't setting yourself up with arguments. "hey, this is a play gun. Yeah it looks real but it's still a play gun."

The rule has nothing to do with kids growing up to be criminals in the use of guns. It has to do with keeping our kids safe in school. Enforcing no guns treats the gun issue as the serious threat that they are.

Our schools in our district have zero tollerance for weapons. In fact, when my now 12 yo was in KINDERGARDEN, she just drew a pictures of just a gun and I got called INTO the principals office and was told that it was just a warning, but realistically, it was enough for a ONE DAY SUSPENSION! Yikes! So ya, the school aren't messing around and frankly, I'm glad they aren't.

I'm so sad to read some of these replies. Talk about PC run amok. I mean, they're squirt guns, for cryin' out loud! Did these women never have a childhood? Squirt guns were one of the joys of being a kid during the summertime, right up there with water balloons, slip-n-slides, Astro Pops, and playing in the fire hydrant. There's nothing about them that says, "Go buy a real gun and real bullets and shoot real people." I'm sure these ladies would have a collective aneurysm if they saw that not only do I allow SQUIRT GUNS at my house, we also have SUPER SOAKERS! Oh, the horror! I'm sure my two little girls will grow up being NRA member, 2nd Amendment-quoting lunatics who shoot up their entire school during lunchtime one day because I allow this extreme practice. LOL

Every year during summer camp, I send a care package to my daughter (mostly to share with her dorm mates; food items are discouraged). I usually include Super Balls, little note pads (so they can exchange contact information), pencils/pens, and, yes, squirt guns!

No guns, toy, squirt, or otherwise at school. I also would not let my child carry any toy the looked like a gun to another child's house or playground.

I loved squirt guns as a kid and we had a lot of fun. Now that kind of play needs to be supervised by parents and adults at home, beach, playgrounds, etc.

As a longtime school administrator, I totally agree that we've gone overboard with the no tolerance. Having said that, when you're in an environment with hundreds of kids and you need to maintain safety for all. But more than that, I'd be concerned about the disruption a water gun could cause at school. In CA, there's an education code for suspensions related to behavior that posed a general disruption of the normal school day. You should check with your school principal. If it looks like a water gun (ie. flourescent and small) then it may be allowable. Maybe if you hand out the goodie bags at the end of the day so there's not a possibility of disrupting the school day?

And don't feel old. It's the sign of the times we live in. :(
www.educationmom.com

No toy weapons were allowed at our elementary school.
Not for play, sharing or Halloween.
But they WERE allowed as props in plays and assemblies.
Though I fondly remember my (now 19 year old) son and his friends "bombing" each other with beanie babies in their kindergarten classroom!
A boy will turn ANYTHING into a weapon, so the rule is kind of lame, but oh well, it doesn't irk me so much. I keep my own rules at home and we have had our fair share of toy weapons around here :)
Check with the teacher. If it's not allowed at school maybe the kids can take the bags home and open them there, or put the squirt guns in their backpacks for later.

i know the school district i grew up in doesn't allow any kind of toy guns at all now...and my son's current preschool is the same.

i feel old too.

Unfortunately, no. In my school district a kid was expelled for having a nerf gun. I too think this is one of the things we have gone overboard about but I sorta understand why they do it. But I do find it sad. No guns, play swords, knives, etc are allowed on school premises or the buses. It wouldn't offend me if my child received this but I have several friends who think even play guns should be banned. I find it funny cause as soon as their sons are out of their view they turn sticks, cars, anything into guns. But I digress. Hope whatever you decide turns out well.

Some schools ban squirts guns and some don't.
You have to ask your school.

This again, is Zero Tolerence at work, I would contact the school with those questions.

I don't know different schools would react to it differently. I would ask the school before taking them.

What about doing dive sticks instead of squirt guns? Still poolish and more acceptable! ;)

As far as the no tolerance policy, well I think zero tolerance policies are ridiculous and need to go away, but I still think a squirt gun comes too close to the line and shouldn't be allowed...sorry! My main problem with the zero tolerance rules are when a Kindergartener gets suspended for bringing a plastic knife in his lunch box to cut his fruit...or whatever that case was. There is some gray area, but honestly, guns are too easy to mistake for real or fake, even at neon green ;), so I don't think schools should take chances with those!