Disney defends right to sell toy guns
By Robert Johnson | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted October 28, 2002
Guns -- of the toy variety -- are in ready supply at Walt Disney World more than a year after Disneyland in California stopped selling them or featuring them in that theme park's attractions.
Rows of $16 wooden muskets and $10 antique-style pistols are popular souvenirs in both the Magic Kingdom's Frontierland and the park's Pirates of the Caribbean store. Six-shooters reminiscent of the one used by "Texas" John Slaughter, a 1950s Disney television hero played by Tom Tryon, are offered in red holsters.
In this post-Sept. 11 era of heightened security that includes searches for possible weapons in guests' bags, the Magic Kingdom -- Disney World's top-drawing park -- continues to feature a shooting gallery as well as toy rifles with sound effects that are aimed through shooting slits to protect the wooden fort on Tom Sawyer's Island.
All of this has prompted criticism from some guests in recent days, as news about the sniper shootings in the Washington area attracted the attention of news media worldwide.
"It just seems a complete contradiction to be selling toy guns at a time when security searches are trying to detect concealed weapons and explosives that may be about to be used by terrorists," said Les Wright, a tourist from Oldham, England.
Disney World spokeswoman Jacquee Polak disagrees.
"The toys we have available for our guests are designed as props and for make-believe play," she said. "Believing that parents know their children best, we have always respected our guests' ability to choose what is an appropriate toy for their children."
Wright, a 47-year-old public-housing manager, said the guns appear to conflict with Disney's professed ideals.
"Disney prides itself in supporting traditional family values. It should set a better example," Wright said.
But other tourists see the toy guns as harmless.
"They are presented here as an important part of American history," said Marilyn McCormick as she visited Tom Sawyer's Island last week. As her 4- and 8-year-old sons loaded a cannon from a faux powder keg and squeezed off rifle shots from the fort, she said, "We can't deny our past, in which firearms played a important part."
Polak said guest feedback is a "hallmark of our business, and this has not been an issue for our guests." Further, she said that toy guns represent "a small, small fraction of our merchandise offerings."
Walt Disney Co. has always struggled to strike a balance between fantasy and political reality. Guns, the treatment of animals, racial and gender stereotypes -- all have prompted the tourism giant to tweak attractions over the years.
Well before terrorists struck Sept. 11, 2001, California passed a law banning the sale of realistic-looking toy guns. Lawmakers there acted after the 1999 fatal shootings of 14 students and one teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado.
In response to the state law, Disneyland stopped peddling all but its Space Age-style ray guns and even removed violent video games from its arcades. Officials there also removed the sound-effect rifles from Disneyland's version of Tom Sawyer's Island.
Disney World was ahead of its Southern California counterpart in removing fake guns from one attraction: the Jungle Cruise in Adventureland. Disney World disarmed its boat guides -- who had long wielded pistols to scare off animatronic hippos -- in 1998.
That was about the same time that the Central Florida resort opened its Animal Kingdom park, which is partly a zoo and has live hippopotamuses. Disney World officials decided it didn't seem right to be promoting wildlife in one park and frightening fake animals with faux firearms in another.
At SeaWorld in Orlando, guns aren't part of either the shows or the souvenir stores, spokeswoman Becca Biddes said.
At Universal Orlando, the Jaws ride still involves a play-acting guide fending off a killer shark with a rifle. But the resort's toy-gun selection is limited to whirring, Space Age models at the store adjacent to the Men in Black ride.
Jim Canfield, a Universal spokesman, said those toy guns aren't realistic and are designed to express the comedic mood of both the Men in Black movies and the ride. In the science-fiction comedy, all the guns are used against alien monsters.
"The merchandise is consistent with the fun of Men in Black," he said.
Polak said Disney World's guns aren't sinister in appearance either.
"We make sure the toy guns we sell are manufactured and packaged to look like a toy with brightly colored orange safety caps to make sure there is clear distinction."
Since when did firearms run counter to "traditional family values?" American culture is practically founded on guns and their use, from the ideal of the cowboy to the entirity of "Southern hospitality" and gentility. And traditionally it was an American right of passage to be taught by your father to shoot a rifle, and in places where ample woods are available it still is. Call them outdated and violent if you will, but the civillian ownership, if not still a cornerstone of what shaped our society was certainly a key in its formation. Disney certainly doesn't have anything against paintball guns on property either, judging from 
