The gun had been modified to remove its orange tip, making it identifiable as a toy.
Those orange tips are a rotten idea. I have never heard of any time when an LEO said, “I was just about to shoot them, and then I saw the orange tip on their gun, so I didn’t.”
Likewise, since it would be easy to put a fake orange tip on a real gun, it does the police no good anyway.
Instead, kids need instruction that they should never, ever draw down on a cop, and if a cop ever orders them to do something, they must. And most important of all, a fake gun can get them really shot.
There is no reason that boy would've had a non-lethal gun, unless it was to impress or scare people. Perhaps to shoot out windows or cause other mayham. On a Cleveland news site, someone posted in a discussion that several members of a very tough gang in that area, some as young as 13, had been arrested this summer.
Yesterday was a very dark, rainy and cloudy day, I'd think obstructing vision. The neighborhoods are on edge about the balance between keeping the neighborhoods safe and not being too aggressive. No parent in their right mind would let a child out of the house with a somewhat real looking gun, with no logical place to practice shooting it, under these conditions.
Back in the old days (when I was a kid) most adults could tell the difference between a BB gun and a real gun, and wouldn't call the cops on a kid with a toy.
Are there any laws against that? It sounds like a pretty good idea.
If the kid survives, he got his instruction.
The fke orange tip on real guns has been done. cops have recovered real guns with orange tips.
CC
I was reading about a guy who painted the end of his gun neon pink.
He did it so that, if anybody falsely accused him of drawing his gun on them, all he would have to do is have the officer ask the complainant "what color was the gun?"