Today, Anti-Gunners are Triggered & Traumatized by: Nerf Guns

The life of an anti-gun activist: Constantly triggered, traumatized, and thin-skinned.

You know, if it weren’t for the fact that they’re doing their level best to disarm me and other law-abiding American citizens, I’d feel rather sorry for anti-gun activists. Can you imagine being so fragile that the thought of a child playing with a Nerf foam toy would send you into a spiral of terror and confusion? If you’re like me, any incipient sympathy pangs will dissolve into a belly laugh as soon as you start reading the Empire State Consumer Project’s letter to Hasbro about their coolest new toy: the Nerf Ultra 1. Hold onto your sides, folks:

“As we watch holiday toy commercials, we see the Nerf Ultra One and other extreme Nerf machine guns for children and are reminded of mass shootings that have devastated American children and families for decades now. In these times, the TV ad for this product plays like a Saturday Night Live parody, except that it is not at all funny,” said the Dec. 3 letter.

Yes, that’s right: The anti-gunners are triggered by the thought of kids playing with a toy that, for decades, has been the golden standard of safe, harmless fun. It’s true that the toy is a little bit like a machine gun in that it is capable of firing multiple projectiles with a single trigger pull…but so is Harvey Weinstein when he sees an indoor ficus plant and I don’t see any querulous letters from the Empire State Consumer Project about him.

Hang on, I think it’s time for another howlingly hilarious excerpt:

“How do these weapon products use your business as a force for good? Who would this child be shooting with his cache of assault weapons?”

As a former child, allow me to clear up the confusion for Carol Chittenden and Judy Braiman, authors of the letter: This child will be shooting his friends, his siblings, maybe his parents, and probably the grandma who gave him the toy. And each and every one of them will laugh (and perhaps ask him to clean up the foam darts before dinner, dear). This isn’t one of those cases in which reasonable people can disagree—we’re not talking about a toy gun that could possibly be mistaken for a real one. This toy is safer than the Tonka truck I brained my little brother with when I was 6. Porcelain dolls are more menacing than a Nerf gun.

Okay, one more knee-slapper from Carol and Judy before we call it a day:

If your research shows that children are craving toy assault weapons, you have missed the mark.

Have…have Carol and Judy ever met a child? Children love ballistic toys, and here’s what all kids know: If you don’t have a ballistic toy to play with, you can simply find dirt clods to huck at your best buddies to let them know how much you love them. Sometimes dirt clods have rocks and stuff in them, and you might end up with a nice forehead scar (like I did) or a minor concussion (like one of my friends did), but hey—at least you didn’t use a brightly colored plastic toy to do it!