Water Gun safety? Yes, that’s right. The Baltimore Sun on Friday, May 5th., published this warning, “Manchester police warn that water gun game played by Carroll County high school seniors could be dangerous.”
A Carroll County high school tradition of playing water gun games in which students attempt to eliminate seniors on an opposing teams by spraying them with water has become alarming to local police, as participants have reportedly begun modifying water guns to make them look more like realistic guns, and casual observers may not immediately understand the nature of the activity, according to a police statement shared May 4 on the Hampstead Facebook page.
An armed individual was reported to the Manchester Police Department on the morning of May 4, police said, which prompted officers from the Manchester and Hampstead police departments to respond to the call. The individual was a Manchester Valley High student armed with a water gun waiting to ambush a “Water Wars” rival, police said.
The informal game will likely continue for the next two weeks, according to the police statement, and officials are urging parents to discuss water gun safety with their children.
“I chuckled when I heard this. I thought it was a joke.”, said Thomas Robb, the National Director of the Knights Party of the Ku Klux Klan, based out of Harrison, Arkansas. “As a child, myself and my friends played ‘Cowboys and Indians’ many times, and of course, the cowboys always won. Child’s play has changed in today’s times. We’re told ‘real’ firearms kill people. I’m not sure how, because mine have never left the house by themselves, nor when I’m out, mine has never unholstered itself and held people up. But we’re told, and we’re supposed to believe this is possible. Here we have some kids out having fun instead of sitting at home playing the latest video game, or with their faces glued to a phone or computer screen, or better yet, they’re not out being destructive. Now I’m pretty sure any adult with any sense at all would be able to tell that these kids are having fun. There’s a big difference between a bullet and a water stream coming from the muzzle of a firearm. When is the last time that you saw a school shooting on TV that the children were laughing, playing and dancing around? This is nothing more than the school system, and their local police department trying to indoctrinate these kids into thinking firearms are a bad thing. And they’ll think this into adulthood. Teaching children that firearms are a bad thing may just get them killed later in life.”