ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Hempstead, New York, officials, citing concerns for the safety of children, not only warned parents off buying toy guns as gifts this Christmas — but also took the over-the-top step of hosting a toy gun buyback event.

Welcome to the new USA, home of the pansies. Summer camps, for crying out loud, used to provide BB guns to kids to fire at mounted balloons.

Now we’re confiscating squirt guns and foam-firing plastic rifles?

“We don’t want the kids playing with guns,” said Hempstead Village Trustee LaMont Jackson to WABC-TV. “Guns are dangerous.”

Yes. But toy guns are not. They’re, um, toys.

“Saying no to guns is important,” Hempstead Village Mayor Don Ryan chimed in, the Blaze reported. “Even toy guns.”

Well, if safety is a factor, then saying no to knives would seem important, too.

The FBI found 40 murders due to knives or cutting instruments occurred in Arizona in 2016; in California, that statistic stood at 280. Other states saw varying rates of murder-by-knife that year, ranging from 20 in Kentucky to 48 in Georgia to 52 in Maryland.

Death by bicycling is a biggie, too.

“In 2015,” the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported, “over 1,000 bicyclists died and there were almost 467,000 bicycle-related injuries.”

While adults between the ages of 50 to 59 suffer the highest death rate due to bicycling, children between the ages of 5 and 14, as well as young teens between the ages of 15 and 19, “have the highest rates of nonfatal bicycle-related injuries,” the CDC reported.

Shouldn’t something be done here?

Surely, a bike buyback program is warranted.

Here’s something to consider as well, in a headline from Forbes from January 2017, as well: “Death By Selfie: Serious Incidents, Including Injury And Death, Are On The Rise.” The story spoke of how several youths taking selfies on a lake in India drowned when their boat tilted. America has lakes; America has youths. Catch the drift?

Fact is: Life is a dangerous past-time. Regulating away every danger is impossible. Moreover, using real guns to murder, maim and kill is already outlawed. So is using a firearm in the commission of another crime, like dealing drugs. Going after the toy guns now isn’t going to help with any of those firearm-tied crime statistics.

Police and hand-wringing politicians say the toy guns can be mistaken for real guns, and officers on the job may mistakenly shoot to kill. But that sounds more like a police problem than a toy gun problem.

That sounds more like an excuse to bring about an agenda. And so it is, using the left’s favored “for the children” approach.

The real issue here is the left hates guns — the left hates the Second Amendment. In their hunger to obliterate the individual freedom Founding Fathers recognized in the Constitution as a God-given right to self-defense, the left has gone after the most propaganda-vulnerable: the children.

They’re trying to sell the idea that toy guns are nearly as dangerous as real guns in hopes of guilting parents into relinquishing their rights to decide, and with the ultimate aim at teaching children who don’t know better to fear the Second Amendment.

But a toy is a toy is a toy. That goes for toy guns, too, no matter how many pansies try to paint otherwise.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter, @ckchumley.

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