MEXICO CITY, January 20, 2009: (HPI note: Our founder, Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, often expressed concerned about the effect of violent toys on young people. You can read his thoughts at https://www.hinduismtoday.com/archives/1992/03/1992-03-06.shtml).
Over the Christmas holidays, Othon Cuevas Cordova, a Mexican congressman, had his life threatened, albeit in jest. His young nephew pointed a toy pistol that he had received as a gift at the lawmaker and said, “Tio, I’m going to kill you.” Mr. Cuevas was not amused. He talked to the boy’s parents about the inappropriateness of giving a child a weapon, even a plastic one, in a country so overrun with violence. And he sped up the introduction in Mexico’s National Assembly of a legislative ban on the fabrication, importation and sale of toy guns and other warlike toys.
“The boy was so young he could barely say the words,” said Mr. Cueva, who is from Mexico’s southern Oaxaca State and represents the center-left Party of the Democratic Revolution. “But from infancy, children are learning the culture of violence and we need to do something about it.”