Attacking the machismo of gun ownership

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

8. I've been trying for the week plus to unravel...

...the mix of misconceptions and miss guided solutions in this OP. Here's what I have.

Of course it's a good idea to have toy weapons easily distinguishable from the real thing. I remember at least two cases of the police killing a young male because they held a gun that looked real but wasn't.
Let's start here:

One toy maker was quoted as saying that even though their toy is shaped and detailed so it looks exactly like the real gun it is modeled after, requiring them to cast it in brightly colored plastic -- instead of being black or silver -- has caused their sales to drop dramatically. It seems little kids do not like the brightly colored models because they do not look "tough" like the darker models do.

This first paragraph establishes some major misconceptions. In reality, 15 CFR 272 had been around for 26 years before Tamir Rice was killed by police. The author of this OP writes that a toy maker has claimed that sales have dropped and that this can be attributed to laws like the federal requirement I quoted from 1988.

I have several issues here. Laws like 15 CFR 272 were well intentioned with the goal of decreasing the incidence of police killing young folks for playing with toys. My conclusion of what's happened over the last three decades is that the heinous killings of young folks by law enforcement has less to do with the color of the toy and more to do with the color of young person. At best maybe this law does something to help white kids.

I remember parents reacting to violence and primarily guns but also various toy weapons since the '60s and not allowing their children to have them at all. I think the colorization has not much to do with the drop in sales weapon toys.

Also, the extrapolation that school shooters (who average about 16) have the same (ill founded) mindset as the six year olds who no longer spend their whole paychecks on pink and orange toy guns.

Next, I consider:

We know that for many mass shooters, the guns they chose to murder innocents was a source of machismo for them. Owning AR-styled weapons made them feel "manly" and "tough" because the guns looked "badass".

How exactly do "we know" this? I infer that there are few factors at work here. I suggest that the fact AR type rifles are about the most popular rifles sold today has a bit to do with this. Add to this that many news, movie, video game and TV show portrayals of "effective" guns for killing are AR and military styled rifles. Maybe lots of these shooters are just copying what they say in the news about other killers.

I've decided that much of what is claimed and concluded by the restriction set in this thread is mostly just a lot of feelings.