From a 1985 The Day story on ‘aggressive fantasies’:
Sales of action figures and accessories brought more than $620 million last year… Toy gun sales accounted for $64 million…
`When I was young, it was army men and cowboys and Indians. I think the format for fantasies has changed,’ said John Pedesco, chief psychologist at the Child Guidance Center in Des Moines, Iowa. `It’s become more space and surrealistic, but the nature of the play has not changed…’
‘I think we have one of the more violent societies existing today,’ said Pedesco. ‘If we’re going to look at where it (aggressive play) comes from, it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.’
2 Warps to Neptune 
Ahh, the glory days of guns before that dreaded “orange tip.” That gun is killer!
There’s some more interesting quotes in that article:
“Violent fantasies are not inherently unhealthy … It’s not socially acceptable to shoot somebody, but it is socially acceptable to play at it. What’s good or bad isn’t the point. … If the kid has a need to express aggressiveness, he may do this by his selection of a particular toy.”
Playing guns was one of my favorite pastimes when I was a kid. There was nothing better than getting together with all my pals and “killing” each other, playing “war” …in fact, the more dramatic and gory we depicted our deaths, the more fun it was, lol.
Plus, there was never any hesitation from either of my parental units when it came to me pulling one of those gun toys from the shelves. Heck, anything to keep me occupied was well welcomed, right?
I cringe these days whenever I see a kid enthusiastically clutching a gun from the shelf at Target or TRU, only to have his bubble busted by a parent (usually a mom, hehe) who says with a worried look, “Oh no, I’m not getting you a gun. That isn’t a good toy. Why don’t we get something more…um…educational?”
These days with their airy fairy ideas on how to raise a child we are told how mind bending bad it is to let a child , boy or girl ,play with a toy gun ,lest they all turn into mass murderers or worse, politicians. The best fun I had as a boy was playing wars and I think I have grown to be a mostly normal ,balanced adult who ,apart from having a slug gun for shooting tin cans ,has had no more interest in guns . Just let boys be boys . Kids today spend far too much time sitting looking at screens , phones or computers , and the most popular games they play on these screens are the ones where they are killing people or animals. MONITOR WHAT YOUR KIDS ARE DOING ON THESE DEVICES . Get them off their bums . Get them outside .