Toy gunsCalls for tighter regulations of the design of toy guns
The death of people – often children – who carry BB or pellet guns resembling real weapons has prompted lawmakers and activists to call for tighter regulations on the design of non-lethal guns. California has already passed such a law, and it would go into effect on Friday.
A very small sample of the Airsoft game guns // Source: commons.wikimedia.org
In 2015, police officers in the United States have killed at least twenty-eight people holding BB or pellet guns resembling the one Tamir Rice was carrying when he was shot dead in Cleveland, Ohio, last year.
The Guardian reports that the number of fatalities has prompted lawmakers and activists to call for tighter regulations on the design of non-lethal and toy guns.
Cuyahoga County, Ohio prosecutor, Timothy McGinty, said: “I want to call on the legislature and the manufacturers of toy guns not to make guns that look so much like the real thing.”
California has already passed a law – signed by Governor Jerry Brown in September and which would go into effect on Friday — which bars the sale of BB guns unless the “entire exterior surface of the device is white, bright red, bright orange, bright yellow, bright green, bright blue, bright pink, or bright purple, either singly or as the predominant color in combination with other colors in any pattern,” or it is transparent.
Support for the measure in California increased after police in Sonoma County fatally shot 13-year old Andy Lopez who was carrying a toy plastic gun resembling an AK-47.
The actions of the responding officers in some of these cases raise legitimate questions, but the Guardian notes that several deaths this year involved people who placed officers in difficult situations by wielding pellet guns while allegedly pretending to be armed with a genuine firearm.
