Give Me a Break! Consumer Group Wants Hasbro to Stop Selling Nerf 'Assault-Style' Toy Guns

Nick Kangadis | December 17, 2019
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While everyone is entitled to their opinions and free speech, sometimes you just need to tell people to shut up — not in an aggressive way, just in a ‘are you kidding me’ sort of way.

This is one of those instances.

The Empire State Consumer Project, which is just a cute name for people who just want to complain about things because they have nothing better to do with their lives, recently wrote a letter to Hasbro using spooky language to attempt to have the toymaker stop selling toys that look like “assault-style” weapons because they could remind people of mass shootings.

“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,” the letter said. “Toy guns are one thing, but these emblems of mass destruction take them to the next, horrifying level.”

What “horrifying level” is that? Are they worried about projectile foam being launched at other children? Some people have waaaaaaaay too much time on their hands. This is just another group of unelected people trying to tell people how to live their lives.

And sorry, but if your first thought after looking at a Nerf toy gun is mass shootings, you might need to seek professional help. And, the fact that they think current-day Saturday Night Live is funny says all you need to know about this group.

“Corporate social responsibility is not a slogan; it is what calls you to raise the bar in the interests of children and become a source for the non-violent creative playthings children deserve,” the letter continued to say. “Marketing assault weapon toys to this most vulnerable group of consumers is an assault on their dignity and their worth as human beings.”

Please. I went to this group’s Facebook page, and they don’t seem to have a problem with the violent video games which use copies of actual weapons to kill their opponents. However, even if they did, I would rail against them for calling out video games as a source of a child gone bad. Video games and Nerf guns aren’t the problem.

Maybe try parenting. Much worse and much more dangerous toys were available when I was a kid, but because we had parents who actually parented we knew the difference between real and make-believe. We knew the difference between play and serious. This group wants to talk about the “dignity” of children, but isn’t it more of an insult to their dignity to intimate that they’re too stupid to know the difference between the previously said real and make-believe?

If Hasbro backs down to the outrage mafia, that’s just another company I can cross off my list. Have a backbone, unlike the Empire State Consumer Project.

For local coverage of the story, watch below:

H/T: Daily Wire

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