Posted on 05/11/2009 12:48:00 PM PDT by RLM
Authorities said a 15-year-old boy playing "cops and robbers" with a toy gun was shot and wounded by a Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy who mistook it for the real thing.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbs2.com ...
Must be.
When a firearm is pointed at me, I’ll be sure to focus on the color of a 1/4” piece of plastic at the muzzle.
If you're going to take the orange tip off a toy gun that lets everybody know it's a fake, don't point it at a real cop. (LA Times)
I recall being teased unmercifully when I was about 12 and was observed by a class mate playing "cops and robbers" with my two younger brothers. Big brothers do have to make sacrifices.
I had about two seconds tops to take it all in and react. If I had crashed into those teenager's car I wouldn't have felt any remorse for it. When someone draws down on you with a gun you don't always have a lot of time to see who it is, what it is or how serious they are about it. What your mind first sees is someone pointing a gun at you.
I still feel fortunate that my mind sorted it out so fast because I only saw it for an instant. I didn't have time to keep watching him and drive the truck. I had just looked to my left briefly at the same moment he raised the gun and pointed it at me.
If cops can be lulled into complacency by an orange tip on a gun then smart crooks should paint their gun tips orange.
Cops 1, Robbers 0.
Saw that before ... it’s a quandary isn’t it? So what do cops do? In the dark they see a red tip and think it’s a fake gun and they get shot, or, they shoot anyway and find out it’s some kid ... can’t win for loosing ....
Actually they aren’t likely to see red in the dark. The human eye doesn’t detect red very well in low light. Perhaps you should ask yourself what you would do if someone suddenly pointed a gun at you. You can always take the “wait and see” approach I guess. Cops are responsible for more than their own lives so they might not want to do that.
So I guess the best thing to do is either remove that red thing or paint the whole gun red ....
Not quite pointless. They're allowed to play with stick guns, lego guns, broom guns, finger guns, ray guns, and all sorts of other non-standard guns. What they're not allowed to do is to point anything that looks like a gun in any direction except what would be a safe direction if they held a real gun. I don't want anyone to misunderstand their actions like this cop may have done. They don't have much interest in toy guns in any case; the real thing is much more fun.
I don’t see how either one of those things would make any difference. Not pointing guns at people, especially cops, might help. Kids pointing toy guns at other kids, who all know each other, shouldn’t be a problem.
That’s my feeling too. Goofing around with toy guns can’t help but translate into unsafe handling of real guns. Years of running around with finger on trigger, “shooting” at friends and everything else that moves or doesn’t move, is hardly good preparation for a child to responsibly exercise his/her critically important Second Amendment rights. Start kids very young with real guns (or for the preschool set, realistic air guns used just like real guns in the same settings where a real one would be used), and they’ll learn that both the right and the skill to use guns properly is an important “grown up” thing. There was a FReeper who had her 3 year son practicing at a range with an air gun (while his two older siblings practiced with real guns), and he had to recite the basic rules of gun safety before each shot.
Do you think adults playing paintball are equally immature?
Actually, from the article:
“But the boy’s grandmother, Kim Harding, said he obeyed the deputies’ commands before he was shot. She said her grandson is a special-education student.”
Per other articles, there was no orange/red tip on this toy/replica gun. And per this article, the kid is a “special ed” student. Whoever is supposed to be looking after this kid should be facing some charges. What the heck is a “special ed” kid doing riding around after dark, unsupervised, with a realistic replica gun? A normal kid would have the sense not to point it at someone in a situation that could be mistaken for intent to fire a real gun. This kid apparently couldn’t figure out that when you’re carrying a realistic-looking gun and a police officer yells at you to “Drop it”, you shouldn’t respond by pointing the realistic-looking gun at the officer.
i’d love for you to meet some of the people who are robbed a gunpoint (real guns) by 15 year-olds (and younger) in my city. changes people’s minds real quick about these ‘kids.’
let me ask you a question: where you grew up, did many kids your age rob people at gunpoint?
But I would never presume to tell anyone else how to raise their children I am just relaying my personal experiences and conclusions.
No, not at all.
mindless cops trained to shoot anyone with a gun, forget about the Bill of Rights. these cops are al about risk avoidence, risk of there own injury, so they shoot first, ask questions later. that is the problem with cops these days.
they are so anti-gun, becuase of un-constitutional gun laws, they will not risk there own life , rather they shoot a child first, then ask questions. kind of the stun gun taser mentality.
where is the cop willing to take the buillet over the child??? I thought that is why we paid cops so much, and gave tehm big cushy pensions, all becuase they risk there life for us. but how the tide turnes, they enforce draconian Un-Constitutional laws,a nd go about shooting children with toy guns rather than man up and evalutate the situation before shooting.
bad bad cop, should be fired, no pension for him either. jail time would be in order. this kid aparently did nothing illlegal,a nd was retarded. nice cop, shooting a retarded kid with a toy.
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