When I was small, playing with toy guns was an essential part of growing up. My mother went to great lengths to buy me a plastic Thompson submachine gun and my father modified it so that it could no longer fire the plastic rounds with which it came equipped.
Now, however, toy guns are often considered seriously bad. I guess the thinking is that children may develop violent tendencies but they have ‘World of Warcraft’ for that. It certainly became actively dangerous to run around the Belfast streets with a black plastic gun in my five year old hands.
Today’s invention is for parents who want to discourage their kids from gunplay.
The grips of the toy gun would be made of metal plates. These would be connected in a circuit with a very small voltage across them.
The voltage would be just sufficient to cause an unpleasant buzzing in a young sherriff’s hand, but without the possibility of doing any actual harm.
(If this seems rather draconian, I urge anyone reading this to search online for bitter aloes, which was commonly used to stop me chewing my fingernails when I was stressed).
