It’s Time to Combat the Notion That Guns Are a Game

My pulse quickened and my hands began the old familiar tremble as I perused the picture of an adult in camouflage uniform holding a gun and instructing a group of likewise-attired children not yet in their teens (“They’re Gunning for the Enemy as Junior James Bonds,” Aug 15). It did not matter to me that the gun was a paintball gun. What so distressed me was the mesmerized, attentive look on the children’s faces. I’ve seen that dull, unquestioning look before--on the faces of so many ammo-draped children carrying the all-too-real, deadly weapons of war: mortar rounds, grenades, rocket launchers and assault rifles.

Whatever are the parents of the children in the photo thinking? Don’t they understand that their children, shooting simulated guns, are being desensitized about pointing weapons at other human beings? Don’t they know that the vocabulary of this paintball “game” prepares these children to dehumanize other people, using words like “enemy,” “hit,” “take out,” “knock down,” and even “wound” and “kill”? Does the article really have to tell us that these impressionable kids think instructor “Rocky,” a veteran of the Australian military, is “cool”?

What does it matter to these parents that they may have to sacrifice their children? What does it matter that their children may be only teenagers when they are called to serve in a war? What will it matter when their children are crippled or killed?

As a military veteran of 23 years, I can tell you: It will matter a lot. Not even the free American flag they will receive, for which they sacrificed their children, will much assuage their lifetime of grief. They will certainly question the utility of war and the horrible prices that have to be paid.

From one who was a real “James Bond” for half of the 10 years I served as an officer for the Defense Intelligence Agency: Put away the guns; master at least one other language; become conversant in several others; intensively study world geography, economics, history and religions. After all that, you will probably be too wise to either participate in war or to be “James Bond.”

HOBART “CRUZ” CRUSENBERRY

Rancho Palos Verdes

Hobart Crusenberry is a retired U. S. Air Force Captain.