Speaking of toy pistols...

Which we did, tongue-in-cheek, in yesterday's H&I Fires... snarking my sister a bit about her attempts to keep "gunplay" out of the play-habits of her children. However, depending on where you live, and/or the relative wisdom and intellect of your child... you *should* keep toy guns away from them. As in these toys in Iraq.

Which Pistol is the Real Deal? Photo by Spc. Adam Sanders, January 11, 2008

Staff Sgt. Terry Dahl holds a real 9 mm pistol in his right hand and a toy 9 mm pistol in his left at an Iraqi police station in Seddah, to demonstrate how similar the fake and real weapons look. Coalition forces are asking shop owners to stop selling the toys to children so they are not mistaken for insurgents. Staff Sgt. Dahl is with the 9th Psychological Operations Battalion. .[Update: As reader BCross points out - the caption is incorrect - the toy pistol is in the *soldier's* right hand, the real pistol in his left - but to us, the viewer, the toy is on the left, and real pistol on the right. -the Armorer

A little closer look:

Now, you could put markings on them, like the blaze orange markings required for realistic toys/replicas/air soft guns that are sold in the US.

Or, better, yet, provide the insurgents with these rifles and pistols that look like this, to better identify them...

After all, we *might* get 'em to do it - the current crowd running around as insurgents have, in the past, had some silly-looking iron themselves...