I don’t know. The one I saw did not look like a gun though.
Your defense would have to be you thought he was an alien. Not sure how that would go... untested legal strategy I think.
“Now they are modifying the beads to be more painful,’ the police department wrote on Facebook. ‘As you can see from the attached photos from an incident [Monday] on the cart path, these can be very painful and can cause permanent injury.” That might make self-defense a little more justified. Who knows?
A concealed-carrying victim of this prank might think he was under fire and respond. That would probably hold up.
Given the idea of “ghost guns” being assembled individualistically, including with additive manufacturing (or whatever term they use now for rapid prototype), one could argue that it could’ve been seen as a “real” firearm.
There are weapons out there with very different colors. Remember the green Zombie colored weapons? If you look on gun forums sometimes you see them for sale - all colors or ‘alien’ looking stuff.
I just looked on Amazon and there are a few that look like compact tactical rifles. If someone pointed one of those at me, they’d at least get an ass whooping, if not a .38+P or 9MM in response.