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Going Soft
Should You Be Concerned About the Latest Gunplay Rage? By Teri Brown
The AttractionTeen boys are often attracted to aggressive play, simply because of where they are in their development. It isn't unusual to see boys engaged in more physical play such as wrestling and mock fighting at this age, because they are trying to prove themselves among their peers.
Neil Talkoff is a psychoanalyst in private practice in San Francisco, Calif., and faculty at the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute and Society. He believes that hormones, environment and society all play a part in the tendency for teen boys to be attracted to more aggressive behavior. "Boys are dealing with the particulars of becoming men, and in our society manly stereotypes can still dictate behavior," he says. "Boys are more likely to engage in risky sports, drinking and driving, etc. Boys are often left to pop culture characterizations to define manliness action heroes and rap stars, for example. The attraction to air soft guns is no doubt just a part of that pattern."
"Kids shouldn't ever be in public with their guns in their jeans or in their hand," Shellans says. "As a police officer, if I see a kid walking down the street with an air soft gun, I have no way of knowing whether that gun is real or not. I have to assume that it is."
