The Airsoft guns are replicas of real guns. Some are black, and other than the orange tip at the end are completely indistinguishable from a real gun. They have magazines just like real guns.
My kids have the clear plastic airsoft guns. One of them has a replica of a gun I own. I held the airsoft up to my gun and it is identical in size.
We won’t get them the black guns simply because they look so much like real guns. The clear ones, even from a distance, shouldn’t confuse anyone.
Do a google image search for airsoft and you’ll be astonished by how real they look.
If two or more kids had similar full sized handguns I probably would have been more willing to assume they were on their way to go target practicing or that they were actually playing cops and robbers.
The fact that just one of them had a gun and he was letting the other kids examine it made me think that he had his dads gun, without permission of course. The one thing that they had going in their favor was that they didn’t make any effort to conceal it until the ‘owner’ tucked it into his belt beneath his T-shirt and they all rode away on their bikes.
Working against them was that the sun was behind them which obscured my vision and that it was a full size weapon. The other three kids live up the street from me and they are normal guys. The gun ‘owner’ was a new kid to me.