This week my parenting crisis involved a great deal of controversy of the people yelling back and forth at eachother type. It began when my sons, aged 12 and 14, came home from a friend’s and reported that they’d had a great time “airsofting,” which is apparently what you call it when you take special small guns, which shoot plastic pellets, and play a war game by firing them at eachother. It’s kindof like paintball. But you play it anywhere.

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was they wanted ME to buy them airsoft guns to use around here.  I thought about it for ten minutes, then said, “No, no tradition of gun ownership here. No airsoft guns.” And then the screaming the yelling, the complaining, the demands for an explanation began.

“I’m the mom, I don’t need a reason,” was my first reply. Then, to the older, “why didn’t you stay in Scouts, they had you shooting guns there, if you want to shoot so badly.” And finally, “leave me alone, I just got home from work, I don’t want to argue about this. If you don’t stop, I’ll give you extra chores.”

They skulked away. A couple hours later, after being a good kid, walking the dog, emptying the dishwasher, and talking with the adults at dinner, the older son came in to my room. “Can I talk to you, mom?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Why won’t you let me have an airsoft gun?”

Long sigh. “Let me think for a moment.”  Finally I said, “I do not think an airsoft gun is an appropriate amusement. I’ve always defended the rights of individuals to have guns, but we dont’ have them and I don’t want to start having them now.”

“But it’s not a real gun.”

“And that’s the other reason. This game you’re talking about, running around shooting your friends as if you’re an army man, it’s stupid.” He startled. How could I dare? I continued, “it’s a fake game simulating real violence. I want you to have real experiences, not simulated ones. Guns are for two things, shooting animals and people. Your ancestors homesteaded on the prairie and they had to take a gun out and shoot game, watch it bleed, and die, bring it back home skin it, gut it, prepare the meat and cook it. You have ancestors who fought in World War I, in the Civil War, in the Revolutionary war, who took their guns out and shoot at other men and my great grandfather died out there, and you want to turn this all into a game? Where we shoot at our friends? Not on my watch.”

He tried a few more times to start the discussion, but I think he knew he had lost. And this morning, when I asked him what that strange red cut on his leg was — it looked like a cigarette burn — he admitted it was a wound from one of the airsoft guns.  I gave him a look. He tried to explain that it didn’t usually leave a bloody mark on you, but I think he knew it was hopeless.

I believe that sometimes, yes, you just have to say no to your kids ideas.  So it’s not democratic, or whatever, this is my house and I’m not buying them airsoft guns. Call me a mean mom or whatever. If no one else supports me on this, I feel sure the ancestors do. I can feel it in my bones.