A Viewer Writes: Maryland: Salisbury City Council Considers Outright Ban on Replica Firearms

Hi Joe,

Lifetime member of the NRA and I just received this email shown below today.

Found another story at http://www.ydr.com/story/news/local/maryland/2016/09/26/salisbury-toy-gun-rules/90845480/.

If kids are using these to commit crimes then press the full power of the law on them, no mercy. Parents are even more to blame as well, even more so than the kids. Instead of coming up with some half assed law, why isn't the time and the energy used for education for both parents and kids? To be a parent, if you give your kid a gun, any gun, there are solid, hard core rules to abide by. Granted, you point and shoot at people during airsoft and paintball, but this is done ONLY on the field of play. But, then again, a lot of parents these days shouldn't have had kids in the first place.

For education, one idea is for the city to produce a TV commercial during prime time discussing how gun rules for real guns apply EXACTLY the same for toy guns. That was how I was brought up. (I got my ass beat from my father for shooting my sister with a suction cup gun.) Have the commercial also show the consequences of walking down the street with a toy gun, or running into a store, or someone's home. These kids (and parents) are stuck on stupid.

These toy guns are just going to be purchased elsewhere if not in Salisbury, so the city leadership is giving water to a drowning man.

What really burns me as well, if it is true, is the statement, "If enacted, this proposal could even ban the drill rifles used in JROTC and ROTC programs, by American Legion and VFW posts, in exercises designed to honor our military and our country." Really? Salisbury leadership, as usual, stuck on stupid.