THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, is not something that is often seen by industry outsiders (let alone school teachers), so being invited as a non-techie to CES was a challenge to expand my horizons and get a feeling for a previously alien industry that I couldn’t very well pass up. Being both an attractive female and decidedly non-techie allowed for a kind of strange social experiment to take place. It threw me into the middle of a socially challenged and estrogen starved no-woman’s land. My first experience with CES was the Monday night ”Show Stoppers” event, where companies displayed their products of note, and the annual TigerDirect Charity PC Race. While walking the various booths, the eyes in the back of my head (standard issue when you start teaching) caught what I thought were teenagers playing with dangerous toy guns in need of adult intervention. After discovering that these were company representatives, and having no referral slips or rulers handy I decided to get the skinny on the products being exhibited. They were airsoft handguns, rifles, and shotguns, like the ones used to kill quail without leaving an mark or shattered bone, made by Hobbytron.com, a company better known for their remote controlled toys. The company representative pitched these to me as a no-mess and less painful substitute for paintball guns. When I pointed out that the primary age group that goes paintballing was the teenage and 20-something market and that this might be dangerous, I was assured that these airguns would only be sold to those 18 or older. He did not seem to pick up on the incompatibility in the purchasing age and the target demographic age span, or maybe he simply hoped I wouldn’t pick up on it. Little did he know that I have the built in super-powers of the school marm such as guilt and interrogation. “How safe is this?”, I asked and was told that he wouldn’t want his children playing with it and that like any gun he would have it locked up securely in his house. When asked “how close do you have to be to inflict harm?”, because safety is important, he did not have an answer. I even simplified it for him by asking, “Would you point it in someone’s face?” and to that I received a definitive no. I inquired as to his opinions on selling dangerous sport weapons and to that, this father and supposed expert on the product, replied “it’s not the gun, it’s the person using it”, a slogan so often used by firearms lobbyists. In just one sentence he managed to associate his previously innocent toy company with the NRA and the firearms industry. To make things even better, he did not notice that at that very moment his staff were pointing these same airguns in each other’s faces, no more than 3 or 4 feet from rifle point to nose. Just as luck would have it, they did it again right when he turned around to check up on them. Maybe we should take a cue from Canada and remove these things from store shelves altogether because, clearly, not even company representatives can handle themselves in an adult manner. So here’s my new slogan: Airsoft guns don’t kill people, but Hobbytron.com employees can certainly help. |
