Flak over plastic gun adverts

Police will be speaking to the owner of an Auckland toy warehouse today after complaints about an advertisement featuring plastic assault rifles and BB guns for sale alongside train sets and slides and swings.

Waitemata police district arms officer Trefor Tyler said yesterday he would be in touch with the owner of Pipsqueaks after several people expressed concern about the ads, which ran on page 19 in yesterday's Herald.

Mr Tyler said he had seen the owner a few months ago over the same concerns, but had no problem with his actions because everything with the sale of the weapons was "above board".

However, he said he would revisit the store today to see if he could persuade the owner to adapt his advertising to show the toy firearms for sale on their own, not with children's toys.

Police are concerned the guns could end up in the hands of children because of the association with other toys in the ads.

"It's the only concern I have - where they're placed. It's not the fact he's selling them. He should have little children's ads and bigger children's ads ... the complaints I've had are strictly where the ads are being placed [beside other toys]."

Pipsqueaks owner Tony Allen said he was open to changing his ads.

Mr Allen said he received several complaints yesterday. However, he said the weapons were the biggest selling items among 2000 toys, which showed it was really only the "PC brigade" that cared about the advertising.

"There's an element of the population out there that don't go along with all this PC crap, that see swimming pools getting fenced and fireworks being taken off you as a bad thing and we cater for the people that want to have a BB gun for whatever reason."