So a bb gun is a pretend gun??
*I* learned to never point anything resembling a gun at anything I didn’t intend to shoot to kill (well, except f or targets).
But police training needs to change. A couple of generations ago many kids were given a gun by dad and taught about safe handling. I don’t think this is the case nowadays. As with the Andy Lopez shooting, they’d better start training cops to realize that a kid with what looks like a gun is not necessarily a shooter. As much as some people worry about the case of a kid with what looks like a real gun actually shooting people, it seems nearly as many innocent (if ignorant) kids are getting killed just for coming to the door or walking across a field with a BB or pellet gun.
I’m nearly deaf; I very likely would *NOT* hear someone say “put the gun down and your hands up”, and would get shot. I wouldn’t openly carry anything outside of the range these days, but we used to carry BB guns in fields and the creek and even the hardware store.
I fear overzealous ‘it *might* be a gun, shoot first and ask questions later’ cops much more than I do the actual intentional mass shooter.