Yes, the gun you see in the video above is a Nerf gun.
And yes, it looks verifiably badass. That’s because it was retrofitted by one Adam Savage, one of the hosts of Mythbusters. He made it as part of a Secret Santa exchange on Imgur, adding a five kilogram spring to ensure the foam darts would go extra far. He also took time to do a distressed paint job.
Yes, it is also fun to watch him retrofit it.
But regardless of where you stand on the Second Amendment, Savage’s project begs a question: Do we really need to make toy guns that look eerily similar to real ones? Nerf’s signature blue-and-orange colorway has a function: it clearly demarcates to the kids playing with it that what they are holding is a toy. It’s colorful! It’s whimsical! It definitely doesn’t kill people! (Not to mention the fact that it could be mistaken for a real gun by someone … actually carrying a real gun.)
Look: much like conversations about how (or whether) violent video games and TV shows impact the adolescent psyche, there’s no simple answer to this question. But there’s a time and place to teach your kids about gun safety, and it’s worth considering that maybe — just maybe — making over a foam-dart launcher so that it looks like an instrument of war undermines that objective.
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