Boycott toy guns

A few years ago Walmart stopped selling candy cigarettes, which had led generations of American youngsters into a very bad habit. There's strong evidence that children who use candy imitations become heavier cigarette smokers later in life.

But Walmart still carries imitation guns, which can also put kids -- and many others -- in mortal danger. It's time to ask every merchant of fake weapons to cease and desist. And if they don't, we should hit them with our own best weapon: a consumer boycott.

Last summer, a 22-year-old man picked a BB gun off the shelves at a Walmart in suburban Dayton, Ohio. A few moments later he was shot dead by police, who mistook it for an actual rifle. And last month, on the other side of the state, a 12-year-old Cleveland boy was killed by a policeman who thought that the boy's toy gun was real.

Both victims were African-American, so these episodes have already been folded into the same racial narrative as the Ferguson shooting and the choking death of Eric Garner. But both of the Ohio young men would be alive if not for fake guns, which have proliferated in America since the 1950s.

That's when television brought Roy Rogers, Wyatt Earp, and other cowboy heroes into our living rooms. Millions of boys donned toy holsters and pistols, modeled upon — and advertised by — TV characters. By 1958, 20 million toy guns were sold each year...