There is no definitive scientific evidence that children who play with toy guns will develop into more aggressive adults than those who don’t.
Conventional wisdom, however, dictates that many parents prefer to exercise caution when it comes to allowing their offspring to indulge in violent play-acting with faux weapons.
Sadly, a generation of Mexican children is growing up amid a culture of everyday violence. Gangland slayings, kidnappings and other violent crimes have hit record levels over the past decade. Nobody seems shocked any more by brutal crimes. And the negative psychological effects of living in such a savage society weigh most heavily on the nation’s young.
With gun violence showing few signs of abating, Mexico’s Defense Secretariat (Sedena), surprisingly, is spearheading a campaign it hopes will steer children away from believing violent behavior is acceptable.
“Juguemos sin Violencia” (Let’s play without Violence) encourages children to swap their “bellicose” toys for passive or educational ones.
In conjunction with 20 Jalisco municipalities, Sedena is setting up open-air modules in public plazas where toy guns, swords, knives, grenades and action men armed to the teeth can be exchanged for bicycles, tricycles, board games, plastecine, balls and other non-combative gizmos.
“Exchanging a bellicose toy isn’t going to eradicate violence but can it make a child mindful of what is correct,” Valeria Cruz Jimenez, one of the campaign’s ambassadors, said Wednesday at the Zapopan launch of the program in the Plaza de las Americas.
This module installed near the Basilica will be open daily from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. through August 24. It will then move to Zapopan’s Centro Cultural Constitucion, from August 25 to September 3, and the Centro Comunitaria Miramar from September 4 to 12. Everyone is welcome to come and swap a toy.
All children who take part in the exchange will receive a pin, identifying them as “ambassadors” of the campaign.
And while it is true that age-old kids’ games such as cops and robbers are still highly popular the world over, the potential adverse effects of playing with toy guns is becoming a concern for more and more parents, especially in the United States where gun violence is so prevalent. In particular, many local governments and retail outlets – including Walmart – have stopped the sale of realistic-looking toy guns, which can be mistaken for real weapons and have led to several tragic fatal shootings in recent years.