To the Editor:

I hate this headline “Kids shooting kids” (A1, Jan. 15). It is inflammatory and outrageous. I feel as though the editors are playing on the fears and emotions of people who are hurt, outraged and afraid of things like Sandy Hook and Columbine.

The reality is the kids have Airsoft guns and are playing “war,” or good guy vs. bad guy. In this case they are fighting zombies and have the technology to video their games.

My son and his friends all played with Airsoft guns. They’d go down to the point or the pit or the woods and break up into two teams and go for it.

No different than I, as the only girl in my neighborhood, did with all the other kids I grew up with. Only difference is we didn’t fight zombies, we played war and we used cap guns and cap rifles.

I grew up in the days of the cold war so the reality was none of us wanted to be the “commies” so we would end up playing cowboys and Indians. Yes, I know, not very politically correct — but the idea was you had good guys, cowboys and sheriffs, hunting down and killing the enemy, the Indians.

And in my dad’s generation when they played war, they used real BB guns with real BBs. He thought my son and his friends were soft for playing with plastic BBs and eye protection.

We can keep going back, generation after generation, and see pictures and drawings of kids playing war. And we will continue to see it as time goes on. And just because we played war, or kill the Indian or kill the zombie, it did not mean we were ever going to consider really shooting our friends and classmates or our neighbors at the movies.

We didn’t have video phones or video cameras to shoot all the action with. But if we had, you know darn well we would have.

Deb Hannigan
Brunswick