Parents, Squirt Guns Soak Up Criticism

I read “Soaker Gun: Clean Fun or Dangerous Toy?” (June 23) and was impressed that no one picked up on children’s need for power and control over their lives.

With the spate of violence in the cinema and on television over the past years, a number of features impress our children’s minds.

First, life is increasingly violent, fraught with physical dangers at every turn.

Second, the good guys get blown away as easily as the bad guys, and life does not appear to hold any value in our society.

Third, firearms--real or fantasy--provide one with the power to intimidate, to get what one wants, and to control as well as to protect.

Arms of any sort are instruments with which to inflict pain, suffering and death against those to whom one would secretly or otherwise harbor resentment.

We now have permission to use these instruments.

ELLIS R. WAYNE

Newport Beach