NZ kids get 'licence' to play with toy guns
Children as young as four in New Zealand are being required to apply for "licences" for toy guns.
The scheme was launched at Tahunanui kindergarten in Nelson, South Island, and is spreading rapidly.
Children must answer questions and learn rules before they can play gun games. Card licences must then be carried.
"They have to tell us the rules of guns and the first rule is that you never point a gun at anybody," said Helen Durbridge, the head teacher.
Applicants for a licence must say why they want one. Those who say they want to shoot endangered animals are told why this must not be done.
Youngsters who want to play cops and robbers are told that New Zealand police are usually unarmed, so shooting is forbidden. But children who want to put down a seriously injured pretend horse, or hunt possums - seen as a pest - may be granted a licence.
New Zealand has a high level of gun ownership because of its rural lifestyle.
But a series of mass murders during the past decade, and incidents in which police have shot criminals, have heightened public awareness of the dangers.
Police have given the scheme their tacit approval.
------------------
~USP
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998
Children as young as four in New Zealand are being required to apply for "licences" for toy guns.
The scheme was launched at Tahunanui kindergarten in Nelson, South Island, and is spreading rapidly.
Children must answer questions and learn rules before they can play gun games. Card licences must then be carried.
"They have to tell us the rules of guns and the first rule is that you never point a gun at anybody," said Helen Durbridge, the head teacher.
Applicants for a licence must say why they want one. Those who say they want to shoot endangered animals are told why this must not be done.
Youngsters who want to play cops and robbers are told that New Zealand police are usually unarmed, so shooting is forbidden. But children who want to put down a seriously injured pretend horse, or hunt possums - seen as a pest - may be granted a licence.
New Zealand has a high level of gun ownership because of its rural lifestyle.
But a series of mass murders during the past decade, and incidents in which police have shot criminals, have heightened public awareness of the dangers.
Police have given the scheme their tacit approval.
------------------
~USP
"[Even if there would be] few tears shed if and when the Second Amendment is held to guarantee nothing more than the state National Guard, this would simply show that the Founders were right when they feared that some future generation might wish to abandon liberties that they considered essential, and so sought to protect those liberties in a Bill of Rights. We may tolerate the abridgement of property rights and the elimination of a right to bear arms; but we should not pretend that these are not reductions of rights." -- Justice Scalia 1998