By Wendy Anders

This afternoon, Public Security Minister Gustavo Mata, addressed Costa Rica’s Legislative Assembly to push for the need to regulate the sale of violent toys in the country.

The meeting came on the heels of an assault this morning in Limón in which a man used a toy gun to rob a woman while she was walking with her young son, said the ministry in a press release today. Police officers were able to quickly locate and detain the suspects, and return the items to the victim, said the ministry’s press office

Since 2015, legislators have been discussing a law would regulate the sale of violent toys, video games with violent or military content, as well as the usage of military lingo, ranks, nomenclature, or symbols, and the sale of military clothing or uniforms.

The law (number 19613) was originally introduced with support from the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Justice and Peace, and the non-profit Christian organization Focus on the Family, stated the Justice Ministry in a bulletin. The ministry started a campaign for children to exchange their violent toys in 2014 focused on neighborhoods with high levels of violence.

“It’s not just about not selling these toys in Costa Rica, but it is about taking time to analyze the issue and to reflect. We need to think about what we are giving to our children and why they later are adopting behaviors that we later come to regret because they may be in jail or dead,” said Mata at today’s meeting with legislators.

The Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found in a 1976 study that toy guns were related to higher rates of antisocial behavior in children as compared to nonviolent toys.

In May, researchers in New Zealand published a peer-reviewed study in the on-line PLOS ONE scientific journal on growing violence in the popular building toy Legos. They looked at the product catalogs from 1978–2014 to identify violent themes and found “about 40% of the catalog images were perceived as containing some kind of violence.”

Given this scenario, and the sheer quantity and type of toys on the market, legislators may find drafting such regulations tricky.

In March, Independent Guatemalan Congresswoman Inés Castillo introduced similar legislation in her country, reported the Guatemalan Daily La Prensa Libre.

The United States Bureau of Justice in a June 1990 report to the U.S. Congress reported that, “Between January 1, 1985 and September 1, 1989, 458 police departments … reported 5,654 robberies known to be committed with an imitation gun. Robbery investigators interviewed estimated that, on an average, 15% of all robberies were committed with imitation guns.  In the same time period, police departments reported 8,128 known assaults with imitation guns.”