We can all pretend that they make us safer.

Politicians in San Deigo want to make the city safer. And who is against that? My tendency is to suggest that if they want the public to be safer the first thing any decent politician (an oxymoron I know) ought to do is resign. But the city council of San Diego isn’t about to take my advice.

They have another way of making the city safer. They intend to make it illegal for ice cream truck vendors to sell toy guys to children. The local TV stations says: “Authorities said the number of children who carry toy weapons is growing at an alarming rate, putting the public and officers at risk.”

OK. I am waiting for Safety Officer Wesley Mouch to announce that: “It is our intention to ban pretend guns and pretend ammunition. We believe that this will reduce the number of pretend deaths significantly. In addition our pretend medical services will have far fewer pretend wounds to deal with. It is claimed that cities in Legoland saw a dramatic reduction in pretend crime as well though more bored children did throw real rocks through real windows -- someone should the little buggers where city hall is located.

The local police chief William Lansdowne said may kids “have purchased these [toy] guns from the ice cream vendors, so it gives us the opportunity to really control a problem and prevent crime in the city.” Prevent crime? Are the kids using toy guys to stick up toy banks?

Are they hijacking Hot Wheels cars with these toy guns? Are all cops assholes? (If not they sure do a good job acting like ones.) I can't see this reducing crime though I guess we can pretend it does.

I grew up in the US (I know, I know, don’t say anything -- I pretend I’m Canadian) and virtually every kid in our neighborhood had toy guns. We ran around pretending to shoot each other. It was good practice. It taught us how to deal with idiotic city council members when they showed up.

Now quite honestly there was zero problem. None. No one got hurt. The kids didn’t rush out and buy real guns to kill people. They didn’t stick up banks with them. And back then cops were apparently smart enough not to shoot children with toy guns. Apparently the police today are so brain dead (I suspect they vote Republican) that they can’t tell a toy gun from the real thing. Instead of banning toy guns shouldn’t we ban stupid cops? They kill far more people than kids with a cap gun.

When I say ban them I mean something simple. Test the officers. If they can’t tell the difference between a toy gun and a real gun then disarm the idiots immediately and don’t give them the real thing until they can tell the difference. Send them home to study, without pay.

Let us admit that the real problem is trigger-happy psychopaths in police uniforms running around looking for an excuse to shoot someone -- even a kid with a toy gun. There has been a steady decline in the quality of police officers and typical of bureaucrats instead of fixing that problem they try to find ways to strip the public of freedom instead. On 9/11 government bureaucrats at the airports let people get on planes with box cutters and Americans have been paying the price every since.

It’s really time to stand up to the idiots. The city council of San Diego is our collective winner of Morons of the Week. We’ll send them their prize Monopoly money in an envelope with a pretend stamp. I have one suggestion for these morons: get real!

Photo: A Roy Rogers toy gun not dissimilar to the ones we played with as kids -- before cops got terminal stupidity.