Hi, I’m Tim Sisarich and just recently I went in search for a couple of sets of cowboy guns for my four-year old boys.

You know, the kind with the wide belt and twin holsters.

I hadn’t gone out of my way not to buy them buy guns up to this point.

Nor do I really have any staunch view of the dangers of boys and guns ... it's just sort of the way it turned out.

So I popped into the local toyshop to discover that the only guns they sold were strange looking space lasers, with flashy buttons, lights and sounds.

They didn’t even look like guns!

To my surprise, they inform me that they don’t stock those sorts of guns ... Nor did any of the other 6 toy stores I went to.

Can you believe that?

In stores loaded to the roof with horrifically violent video games, dolls that look like prostitutes, Digimon or Pokemon (or whatever they’re called), which encourage our children to role play with demons, as well as a raft of politically correct, non-sexist, gender-neutral toys like blocks & puzzles, I can’t find the one toy that boys are naturally wired to play with.

Even Woody, from the Toy Story movies is gun-less, despite the holster and sheriff’s badge.

One expert put it this way, “They’re out there playing war games; they’re not out there killing for killing’s sake. They’re showing their aggression like boys do. We need teach our sons how to constructively channel and manage their inborn aggression.”

I did manage to find them some cheap junky things from a dollar store ... You should have seen the faces of the mums as we walked through the Mall, playing and shooting at each other.

Tim Sisarich, Executive Director Focus on the Family NZ as heard on Scrubcutters , Newstalk ZB

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