There have indeed been tragic incidents of police accidentally shooting people holding realistic toy guns. But accidents happen. A man in Louisiana was shot recently when he brandished a cell phone that police mistook for a gun. Should cell phones consequently be banned? It's reckless behavior around police, not the objects involved, that tends to be the problem.
A famous case of applying the opposite reasoning has been playing out in Annapolis, Md., this year. A 7-year-old there attempted to hold up a video store with a toy gun -- the most absurd caper since Woody Allen tried a prison break with a gun made of soap in "Take the Money and Run." A city councilwoman promptly called for a ban on such toy guns, earning herself national derision. The first order of business should have been to tell the kid not to try to rob people.
Unfortunately, Towns, the scourge of toy guns, is not some outrider. Similar proposals are bubbling up in state legislatures, and it's impossible to buy a decent toy gun from Toys "R" Us. Too bad. As Chesterton wrote earlier this century about a different toy and its attraction: "The toy sword is the abstraction and emanation of the heroic, apart from all its horrible accidents. It is the soul of the sword, that will never be stained with blood." The toy-gun banners will never understand that -- or the souls of boys.