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[ by Charles Cameron — toys as weapons, weapons as toys, appearances, can be deceptive, ethnicities too ]
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Before there were the realities we now know as “virtual reality” and “real life” there were the two known as “real” and “pretend” or “make-believe”.

Confusing pretend for real can be harrowing enough, as we saw this morning:

Hand Grenade Toy Prompts Evacuations At Ontario International Airport « CBS Los Angeles http://t.co/qpZi3QRyac

— Crystal Cruz (@CrystalCruzCBS) August 12, 2015

but the reverse has even more dire potential:

Bomb alert over hand grenade used as a toy http://t.co/PM8HIpkh #YEPleeds @MarkLavery1 #pontefract

— Vicki Robinson (@VickiMRobinson) May 9, 2012

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For the record, toy grenades are a a regular feature of the news these days, see for instance:

26 June 2015, Bomb disposal team called to toy grenade in Coatbridge

19 Octpober 2014, Toy grenade puts Newport News neighborhood on alert<

Get your Toy Grenades Battery Operated for Pretend Play on Amazon:

Pull the grenade pin, press bar and throw!

Estimated Delivery Date: Aug. 14 – 19 when you choose Expedited at checkout

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Watch out, Staten Island:

BREAKING NEWS: Police looking on Staten Island for men possibly with assault rifles. MORE: http://t.co/nyFoiJbEjg pic.twitter.com/Abf8DTsjrl

— Breaking News Feed (@PzFeed) July 17, 2015

But then again..

when is an assault rifle not an assault rifle?

‘Assault rifles' in Staten Island were paintball guns: NYPD – NY Daily News http://t.co/Ysyy5pXhxL

— Krishna Mungur (@mungurk) July 20, 2015

and come to that,

when is a paintball more than a paintball — when is it a weapon?

Teens arrested in Staten Island paintball attacks: One of the attacks, on an Orthodox Jewish man, was investig… http://t.co/LfEw9g5gdj

— David Bar-Lev (@DavidBar_Lev) July 20, 2015

and when is the reason not just a paintball, but a scarf?

Don't fool yourselves. It wasn't the paintball guns that shut down Staten Island. It was the head scarves #islamophobia

— Wisco (@Wisco) July 18, 2015

— and if that’s not enough, is skin color a difference that makes a difference?

So open-carry clowns are allowed w/ long guns in Target but #JohnCrawford was shot dead in Walmart holding a toy gun? pic.twitter.com/BK30NybXDU

— Dana Fairbanks, M.D. (@dcfairbank) August 12, 2015

Ah yes.

Target and Walmart — another nice pairing that gives that last tweet just a touch of extra impact!

[ by Charles Cameron — Chattanooga — when a gun free zone is no longer gun free, aka words are not the deeds they describe ]
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Two sides of the same Chattanooga coin?

Chattanooga: Assault Weapons a Security Problem for U.S. (Cole @ Truthdig) – http://t.co/bfG9wNTe3O pic.twitter.com/ZmHIrwrlMN

— Juan Cole (@jricole) July 17, 2015

and:

.@megynkelly: "Look at at the bullet-riddled storefront. You can see a sign circled in red… It reads: 'No guns.'" pic.twitter.com/ixXdhBbAA4

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 17, 2015

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We mostly understand that Juan Cole and Megyn Kelly represent opposite sides in the broad strokes liberal vs conservative divide, but on this occasion their two views are not necessarily opposed so much as oblique, maybe even orthogonal.

Cole’s point is about his desire to keep guns out of the hands of criminals / fanatics / terrorists, while Kelly is talking about her desire to allow trained military personnel to carry arms on duty.

But how easily we elide the nuance into simple opposition.

[ by Charles Cameron — NB: not claiming equivalency, simply documenting some provocative “compare and contrast” usage on Twitter ]
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Gun-toting Colorado teens pose for prom pics with Confederate flag as parents egg them on http://t.co/UXtCNOjGFi h/t @BenjaminNorton

— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015

just sayin'. pic.twitter.com/GLHLxPgmES

— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015

the wrong combination of flags and guns have a sneaky way of turning average people into violent bigots.

— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015

Ok, there are more parallels between these prom kids & jihadis, as @Bilalhb pointed out to me. Shahada finger! pic.twitter.com/Y40IMzYbBP

— Hend (@LibyaLiberty) May 7, 2015

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We had a similar “gun, book and flag” DoubleQuote a while back, though I haven’t been able to relocate it, and as I remember noticing then, there’s a sort of parallax effect that can come into play, whereby some people see a close similarity and not much diference while others see a huge difference and little or no similarity.

Here’s that earlier DoubleQuote:

If you want more details about the un/fairness of the comparison, NRO had a piece on it titled Holly Fisher: Public Enemy Number 310,345,204

As someone who is interested in juxtaposition both as a means of making points and of raising questions, I find this parallax effect of great interest. I suspect that a decent, insightful study might reveal a great deal about the mechanisms by which humans fissiparate into antagonistic groups.

Fissiparate? Okay, maybe not a word yet, but useful all the same.

[ by Charles Cameron — the future of handgun safety? ]
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Blog-friend James Skylar Gerrond announced today: “Veri-Fire will launch Guardian, our biometric trigger guard for handguns on 13 April.”

What is it?

Guardian is the revolutionary solution in responsibly securing your handgun against unauthorized or accidental use while maintaining unprecedented readiness.

I can barely imagine wanting a handgun — I’m one of those — but if I had one, I’d want it fitted with the Veri-fire Guardian.

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Veri-fire locked:

diagrammed:

and unlocked:

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I wrote a while back about AE Van Vogt‘s science fiction work, The Weapon Shops of Isher, which introduced the concept of “guns that could only be used in defense and only for their owners” — and the Armatix iP1 pistol / watch combo. Sadly, that piece is one of those we lost in the hack last year. This time, the science fiction ref — provided by Brett Fujioka — is from Psycho-Pass.