I had a toy M-16A2 gun as a kid. It wasn’t full sized but it was realistic enough and it didn’t have the orange stripe on the end either.
I had been seen by the police with it many times. Myself, and a gaggle of other kids who had Tommy guns, cap pistols, Bazooka’s and a myriad of other toy weapons later including Crosman air rifles (760’s) and air pistols too.
It was nothing unusual.
Like me you grew up in an era when cops had no realistic expectation that a child might open fire on them.