Toy guns

[kimjamey69]

I believe in the U.S. their should be a law that makes all toy guns easily recognizable that should include airsoft and paintball guns. Then the police officers would make fewer mistakes. Their job is hard enough without having the imposition of a fake gun pointed at them, and they have a spit second to make a decision. They have the live with their actions no matter what for the rest their lives.

We make enough laws in this country, why can't we help the people that are paid to help US?

[Speck Tater]

1. Several states have laws requiring bright orange marking on the barrel. nt

[X_Digger]

8. Which works until..

Someone takes a real gun and paints the tip orange, or embeds it in a fake watergun..

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_KidQawqCyP0/Sa_zz0Tbo0I/AAAAAAAABCk/aVMjEBSAzVM/s400/hi-caliber.org+1.jpg

Or takes an organge tipped gun and paints it black.

via http://www.junkpirate.blogspot.com/


If you point something vaguely gun-like at a cop, s/he has only a moment to decide, real or not.

[gorfle]

16. This is exactly what a cop friend of mine told me.

He said they now come across real firearms that have had the end of the barrel painted bright orange. Unintended consequences and all that.

[krispos42]

25. That's pretty clever

Pistol-grip shotgun with the grip painted orange, imbedded in a big water gun.


Geez, I never would have guess. :-(

[Lasher]

2. Why would you do that without including a section about fake knives?

But not rubber chickens. That would be going too far.

[kimjamey69]

3. Good point

Yes I would include that also thanks.

[Taitertots]

21. I almost died...

Confusing rubber chicken with KFC. There must be laws, someone think of the children.

[Tim01]

22. Because knives are contact weapons.

And the truth is that a 12 year old with a gun can actually kill a cop from 20 yds, it is a real threat. The same kid at the same distance with a knife is not a threat. IF a 12 year old is even ballsy enough to take a knife and charge a cop with a gun, he becomes a threat,but not likely. That same 12 year old just has to be kind of upset and he might pull the trigger.
And airsofts are all over the place now.Fake knives, not so much.

My house has plenty of accessible real guns. And toy guns. We do not have toy guns in my house that could be confused for real guns.

[geckosfeet]

4. If you are stupid enough to point something that could be mistaken for a gun at a cop

your subsequent removal from the gene pool would be tragic but understandable.

[iverglas]

6. oh dear, you need to read this, I think

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=118x10520

Both because what you say is indefensible, and because it's the funniest thing ever to have appeared in the Guns forum.

You may have to read just past halfway down, to post 14, to figure out what the hell's going on.

And if you're not seeing wingdings in post 16, you need to reset your settings. ;)

[geckosfeet]

15. Passing a law to outlaw toys that LOOK like guns seems to be a knee jerk reaction.

Some of the factors in play here are parenting, police training and the unfailing ability of people to do utterly stupid things.

If a law enforcement agent was pointing a gun at me screaming for me to drop whatever it was that I was holding I would probably drop it. However, I can see how someone in those circumstances could be frightened, confused and unaware of the danger he was in.

As a stop-gap measure, it may be advisable to provide written warnings with all toy guns. The warning must clearly state that threatening a police officer, robbing a bank or a store or attempting to commit a crime with your toy gun could be hazardous to your health.

[iverglas]

24. mmmm

There are two problematic aspects of realistic-looking fake firearms.

One is that people in possession of them who are confronted by police may be treated by police as if they are holding real firearms. This is a particularly undesirable outcome if the person is a child.

Bad parenting? Could be, could be not. Capital punishment for the badly parented child? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Police training is defeated by the ever greater efforts by manufacturers to make their products look like the real thing.

The other aspect is that people in possession of realistic-looking fake firearms use them to commit crimes. You are not likely to know that the thing aimed at you as your cash and valuables are being demanded is not capable of doing you serious harm. It doesn't seem really reasonable to allow these things loose in society where they increase the risk of people surrendering their cash and valuables because they fear for their lives.


typos fixed

[krispos42]

20. That was pretty funny

:rofl:

[rrneck]

9. It depends on who is doint the pointing.

A minor could point a gun at a cop and get shot. S/he may be too young to know better or was the victim of bad parenting. That shouldn't get them shot. If all it takes is a bit of orange on the muzzle of the gun, that's money well spent.

[geckosfeet]

14. I am just not sure that a bit of orange paint will solve the problem.

It can't hurt. But police training and parenting would help too.

[rrneck]

19. Absouletely. nt

[sharesunited]

5. It must be pointed out that this is a problem because of the proliferation of real guns.

[bossy22]

10. not really

pretty much all western countries have this issue, even places like the UK where handguns are effectively banned and all other weapons are tightly restricted. In truth, most police forces respond with conception that "a gun is a gun is a gun" and therefore the response for a man with a bolt .22 is similar to that of a guy with an AR-15.

but the issue with toy guns is hard to solve. No matter how many laws you pass to restrict these things, they will always be out there in some form. Kids are "fascinated" by guns...they play cops and robbers and other make believe "Shoot 'em up games". You will never be able to change this, its a part of human nature. Therefore even if you ban these things completely, there will always be someone who cuts a peice of wood, paints it black, and pretends to go "bang bang" with them. Coupled with the fact that no matter how much you try you will never be able to rid a society of all weapons, police will always respond to a "gun call" as if it was a real gun....even if the chances of it being a real gun is pretty low (you can never assume that the chance will be 0)

[spin]

13. That sums it up...

I've seen kids whose parents refused to buy toy guns, play with sticks or even point fingers and say "bang".

We did allow our daughter, at a very young age, to play with toy guns, but we insisted that she treat them like real firearms and never point them at a person. She complied when we were watching. She preferred playing with dolls anyhow.

We would take her to the pistol range and allow her to watch. When she was eight or nine, she said she wanted to learn how to shoot, so I took an old .22 caliber bolt action rifle and cut the stock off to fit her. She would sit at the bench on the range and set the rifle on some sandbags and shoot at a target 25 yards away. (I later sold that rifle to a friend who wanted to teach his kids how to shoot for $25.)

Once she became skilled at handling the .22 rifle, I bought a S&W .22 caliber kit gun with adjustable sights and a four inch barrel. It was the only handgun I could find that would fit her small hands. I taught her gun safety and made her memorize the nomenclature of all the external parts of the weapon. Once she passed my test, I took her to the range and allowed her to shoot the handgun at the 25 yard target. I was very careful to make sure she practiced good range safety.

The .22 Kit gun was surprisingly accurate. It didn't take her long before she was proficient with the firearm. She enjoyed shooting with my wife and myself.

As she grew, she wanted to fire larger caliber weapons. She fell in love with my .45 caliber S&W target revolver which was the same size as Dirty Harry's .44 mag. The recoil was easy for her to handle and she loved the attention she received from the other shooters when she stepped up to the line and loaded and fired the big revolver. She was probably 12 or 13 years old when she first tried the weapon and weighed less than 90 pounds.

One night when she was sixteen, she used that firearm to stop an intruder breaking into our home. Fortunately, no shots were fired. She drew down on him as he was forcing a sliding glass door open. He ran.

All is well that ends well.

[iverglas]

7. "Can you tell the difference between

... a real and a fake gun?"


http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2009/the_trouble_with_fake_guns/main.html

I just watched a rerun of this the other night.

n a split second, do you think you could tell the difference between a real or an imitation gun? Imagine if that gun were pointed in your direction in what could be a life-or-death situation.

It’s not a pleasant scenario, but unfortunately it’s becoming a familiar one for police. Imitation guns, designed to look like the real thing, have been used in home invasions and robberies. Kids have even brought them into schools – with predictably terrifying results.

It's 22 minutes long, and although it's about Canada, some bits are universal. Like watching a panel of four cops try to figure out whether the thing they're looking at is real or fake. They do amazingly well, but had the experiment been real life, there still might have been some unnecessarily dead people.

[yost69]

11. Is it just me or

does the big hopper and co2 tank on a paintball gun not give it away?

Im not arguing the point I think it a good idea if it can be done so that it can't be undone like painting or what not. But there is always ways around everything.

[iverglas]

12. oh, never mind

[gorfle]

17. Impossible to do.

I was a kid - about 8 years old, when I remember seeing toy guns start showing up in the toy stores with bright orange or red plastic plugs on or in the end of the barrel. Prior to that, I remember having some very realistic-looking cap guns that I and the neighbor kids used to play "cops and robbers", or "army" or whatever.

When the guns started coming out with the plugs on or in the end of the barrel, the first thing we did when we got them home was get out the wood burning kit and melt that plastic plug right off.

I have noticed in my walks through toy isles these days that there don't seem to be very many realistic looking toy guns anymore. Most are highly colorful and obviously fantasy. As a kid, this might have appealed to me when we were playing "spaceman", but if I wanted to play at using real guns I would have either spray-painted some existing toy black, or I would have carved myself one out of a block of wood, like we did when we wanted to play with swords.

I can still remember, when I was about 3-4 years old, playing guns with the neighbor kids using a stick I found that was shaped very much like a pistol. Up until that time, my folks would not buy me toy guns. At that time, they realized that it wouldn't change anything as I'd just be running around with a stick pretending to be shooting a gun.

[benEzra]

18. You'd better pass a law to outlaw black spray paint, too, then.

It is a matter of a few minutes to paint a green or orange gun black. The law already requires orange tips on most toy guns, and they are routinely painted over.

[Katya Mullethov]

23. Upon inspection , it appears quite flaccid

Those orange tips have an average life expectancy of 5-10 seconds .

Simply ban the manufacture and sale of toy guns , there is no guaranteed right to them . If not , then carry on dying .



http://www.guardian-series.co.uk/news/1013959.bullet_found_in_doorway/

[Ter]

26. For 200 years or so kids had realistic looking toy guns

More laws on the books banning ownership of more things is never good.