I’m not a firearms expert and I didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night — but I can tell the difference.
How about you???
Gelhaus is a firearms expert training the police in the use of their weapons and you are saying that he couldn’t tell the difference???
He didn’t quickly notice the cheap gray metal, the screws in the shiny plastic stock with screws in it, the absence of a sight on the barrel which is indicative that it’s a pellet gun with the orange tip cut off, and that it was lightweight being carried in the left hand — the offhand???
He mustn’t have been close enough then to see and thus not close enough to be in fear of his life.
Or he didn’t see the toygun because the kid still had his back turned.
He didn’t want him to turn around completely because then his partner might have yelled “it’s a toy” and he would lose his excuse to empty his weapon into him.
Police Love Lewinski:
http://www.citypages.com/2010-04-28/news/bill-lewinski-defends-cops-accused-of-excessive-force/
This Kalashnikov "variant" was cobbled together out of scrap metal, including a shovel. It shoots. You wanna bet your life on counting screws in the stock in the few seconds it would take for the guy to start gunning your brains out?
And yes, I would come pretty close to "firearms expert," at least on this board.