Posted on 05/03/2008 9:56:18 PM PDT by huldah1776
Concerns that realistic-looking toy weapons are confusing police and threatening safety have led 15 states to try going beyond gun control and cracking down on fake firearms. ... Lawmakers across the country are coming to a different conclusion, deciding that it is so hard to differentiate the toys from the fakes that public safety demands they take action.
...from prohibiting imitation firearms in vehicles to banning the toys from convenience stores.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The market for adolescent slingshots should go up. Watch the trends little guys (and girls).
Trying to hold someone up with a passable fake just might get someone shot.
Every state varies, but here (ND) the reasonable belief that you were in immediate danger of serious injury or death is cited in the Century Code as reason for the employment of lethal force.
Guess they need to ban Matchbox cars too, just in case Timmy is on his school guvmint mandated mind altering drugs.
Can’t allow a pretend DWI can we..
I am not saying I agree with the ban idea, but I can see where some nitwit playing stickup with a fake could get killed for their stupidity.
To me, that is part Darwin Award moment, and partly indicative of how far our culture in general has slid down the slope when there might be presumption that someone's kid is running around with a real firearm and malicious intent, rather than playing 'cops and robbers' or 'army' with a realistic looking toy.
Jurisdictions will probably go for this type of ordinance just to try to avoid the liability exposure and headlines of "Cop Shoots Kid With Toy Gun" when some 'banger was really trying to hold up the local 7-11.
CCW holders don't have the thin blue line to hide behind, and depending on your local laws and the identity of the victim, should you decide to shoot in such a case, things could get really nasty for you if you intervene and the 'gun' the perp has is nothing but a toy, especially if you end up in a situation where the race card gets played.
A question this story brought to mind earlier today. Would it be illegal to paint the end of the barrel of a real gun bright orange?
“The market for adolescent slingshots should go up”
Well a wrist rocket is a more formidable weapon than some small callibers
Europe leads,
and the Constitution bleeds.
Had that happen to me in San Francisco, in 1971.
A new Caddie parked, and a well dressed black man got out; across the street & up stairs, the drapes twitched, and what looked like a .45 started tracking him as he walked. This was a poorer, mixed but mostly black area, and both he & the car were very out of place.
I was loading my car for a deer hunting trip, so hid in my recessed doorway, took a bead...AND WAITED FOR A SHOT TO BE FIRED.
The man entered a nearby building, and then a black kid with a toy gun came into full view from behind the drapes. I stood down, and told my wife she wouldn't need to phone the police after all.
Yep; the race card would have been in play, big time.
I am glad for your sake (not to mention the kid, et. al.) that you waited and made sure of your target (though with a handle like yours, I'd expect no less).
This is why we teach our grandkids to not even point toy guns at people...
It is a pity, really, when I think of the countless hours we spent playing 'army' in a time when it was widely assumed that the children had toys, but we just aren't there any more.
Maybe.
And cops & robbers; gangsters & G-men; cowboys & Indians; even (a few of us) aliens & Space Rangers.
In the previous generation, a few went too far, though. One of my uncles was a "cowboy", and the "Indians" who captured him burned him at the stake, with real fire. Did a LOT of damage to one of his lower legs, making walking difficult & painful the rest of his life...but that didn't stop him from serving as a grunt in the Pacific Theater for three years.
Pretty much off topic, but I went to purchase a .22 rifle yesterday. While I’ve done the paperwork before, it’s still mind-boggling the amount of government needed to allow me to buy a squirrel gun.
The Founding Fathers would not recognize this place; not for our advances in technology, but our remission into authoritarianism.
Buy from a private party. No need for paperwork, or nosy government types getting into your business.
Yeh. I’ve always had this image that one day I’d be working on the roof, and some idiot would call the cops reporting “man with a gun.”
The SWAT team pulls up with its M60 machinegun and mortar resolution team, spots me on the roof and opens fire to disarm me.
I tumble off the roof into the wife’s rose bushes, filled with about 250 high caliber holes.
A cop runs up and delivers a coup de grace. “Oh my God!” shouts the cop. “He’s got a 14 volt cordless screwdriver.” Another cop walks over and says “He shoulda called a professional roofer or used Stanley’s non-eletric ratchet screwdriver.”
Then we get this headline the next day: “Homeowner Screwed by Government Again.” And the next day the liberal legislature passes a bill outlawing cordless screwdrivers, and names it the sergeantdave cordless assault screwdriver ban.
My name ends up as the focus of millions of cynical aphorisms for next 10,000 years. Not a way I’d want to go.
Great tagline, sergeantdave!
I’m sorry but I don’t understand the problem. Shouldn’t we ISSUE fake guns that can’t shoot back to robbers, burglars and muggers???
Considering that they are Chippewa, I am not sure who the 'cowboys' were... Thankfully, no damage was done, and the fire was extinguished. Naturally, the kids scattered.
The worst we did was (knowingly) chuck the occasional rock as part of a dirt clod 'grenade', so I guess we were pretty mild by comparison.
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