Comment on Mele’s Musings: Guns are no child’s play

When I was growing up in the Bronx, my friends and I would regularly play “guns.” It was a catchall name for playing Army or Cops and Robbers. I had at various times a cap gun, a gold-colored pistol that was supposed to shoot little pellets but never really did and a plastic Tommy gun that I bought at Woolworth’s for 99 cents. When we would “fire” at somebody in our imaginary play, we would make the appropriate noises of “pew pew pew” or something more rapid fire like “pppppdddddd.” In determining whether a person was shot or was missed was based on the honor system between shooter and target: Was the target ambushed?