Toy Guns in Iraq

Letting children play with toy guns in Iraq is like putting a bull’s eye on the front or back of their shirt. Even here in the States we are more careful about where our children take toy guns.

In the time I have spent outside the wire, I have never seen anyone pointing any sort of weapon at us. There was one or two children who threw rocks at us especially in Balad. Well, one day one of our shot gun riders decided he had had enough. He put a few rocks in the cab of the truck and waited.

The day came when the kid was standing all alone on the side of the street, with rocks in his hands. When he raised his arm to throw one our guy fired first. He hit the kid.

Well there was a complaint and an investigation. But no one would say a word so the investigator had nowhere to go with it. So it was dropped. However, the kid never showed up again. And rocks were never thrown at us again as we went through Balad.

There are more and more children and women who have been deceived into killing themselves for an idea that is false. Insurgents know that American troops are slower to engage a woman or and even slower to engage a child. We want to believe that these are innocents.

Because of this belief, our response time in dealing with a suicidal child or woman is slowed, a slower response that could get people killed. So the insurgents are taking advantage of this. According to the news, Staff Maj. Gen. Ali Jassim al-Freiji, the commander of the Iraqi army's 17th Division, handed down the ban on toy guns in Iraq, as more children are becoming puppets of the insurgents.

They are offering the children candy for the guns. Currently there is no ban on gun ownership in Iraq. Each family is allowed to have one for self defense.

In a war zone it is not a good idea to have children playing with toy guns.

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