Replica firearms (courtesy bpdnews.com)

I find it odd that people get their proverbial knickers in a twist when cops shoot perps brandishing a “fake” gun. If a reasonable person would consider the replica/toy a real gun (e.g., it’s not a NERF gun), what’s the issue? Play stupid games win stupid prizes. Anyway, the Boston Police Department wants taxpayers to know it’s easy to mistake a fake gun for a real ‘un. Hence the quiz. I reckon they’re all real enough to not be pointed at a cop. My question: is that a fake Gucci bag?

 

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39 COMMENTS

    • All of them are real and will be treated as such if used in a threatening manner.

      If every gun is loaded, then it’s hardly a stretch that every gun is real.

      Impersonating a gun is just as dangerous as impersonating a criminal.

    • They’re all real enough that if somebody started pointing one at me on the street, I’d reciprocate with my CZ. No state I’ve ever carried a gun in requires me to wait to ensure the assailant has a real, and loaded, firearm, before I can defend myself from a perceived threat.

      If a cop sees somebody pointing one of those at cops or innocent bystanders, and shoots the wielder, I’d say the cop just did his job properly.

      • I’ve never drawn a line between “a cop” and any other person. In the USA, every cop is a citizen and every citizen is a cop. I learned as a child that it’s foolish and bad ettiquite to point any gun, real or not, at anyone. Having a gun pointed at me is an excellent way to meet one’s creator and I would expect the same of any other person. It’s no worse to point a gun at a uniform than it is to point it at anyone else.

        • Doug, you are overlooking one thing. If you point a weapon at a civilian you can only assume wether or not they are packing. If you point one at a police officer you are guaranteed they are.

  2. Yeah I could tell they were airguns from a glance. Sure, number 6 looks close since I can’t really tell what’s an open port for a CO2 cartridge or an open port for a magazine. But everything else is pretty obviously not a real firearm.

    • We’ll see how fake it looks to you in the dark after you’ve chased some suspect down a dark alley

  3. In reality you won’t see it under such controlled conditions. When some asshat points it at you in the evening, it will look real enough to 100% justify lethal force.

  4. Depends on what they’re doing, not on what they’re holding.

    Simple possession? Doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, you don’t just go around shooting people for exercising constitutionally protected civil rights.
    “Refusing to surrender”? How do you know that they understand that you’re a LEO, ordering them in your official capacity to lay down their possessions and submit?

    Wielding in an offensive manner? Yep, shoot ’em. If it turns out to be a replica or small caliber airgun, give them a Darwin Award for raising the average IQ of the human race by removing themselves from it.
    The only problem is LEOs wrongly interpreting or even outright lying about the offensive manner of the “armed” innocent. Witness Tamir Rice and James Crawford III who were shown by video to be doing absolutely nothing threatening immediately before they were murdered, but they were both reported to have pointed rifles at their murderers when they did not.

    • Have to disagree about Tamil Rice. It wasn’t a “rifle” but a modified air soft gun. Here it is with a real gun next to it.
      http://abcnews.go.com/US/toy-gun-tamir-rice-holding-prosecutors/story?id=35982086
      The modification was having the orange tip removed. “there is evidence that on the day of the incident, at least two people warned Tamir about the dangerousness of using the gun in a public place, ”
      What was he doing? “The grainy footage, which lacks audio, shows Tamir pacing up and down a sidewalk, swinging the gun in his hands, pointing it a few times and chatting on a cellphone.A man shown sitting under a nearby gazebo made a 911 call, telling the dispatcher “there’s a guy in here with a pistol, pointing it at everybody,” according to audio of the call.”

      Worse: “The problem was that dispatchers didn’t tell Loehmann and Garmback that Tamir might be a child and that the gun might be fake. Mandl told Cuyahoga County Sheriff’s Department investigators that she was not aware original caller said those things.” The dispatcher was suspended for 8 days.
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Tamir_Rice
      http://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/index.ssf/2017/01/tamir_rice_shooting_a_breakdow.html
      https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/11/26/officials-release-video-names-in-fatal-police-shooting-of-12-year-old-cleveland-boy/?utm_term=.64f5678eae04

    • You’re correct on the bad shoot of Crawford. (BTW it’s John, not James.) The two cops were not indicted. They had initially said that Crawford failed to respond to their commands. However, the prosecutor explained the “no bill” from the grand jury by pointing out that the officers had been trained to “shoot on sight” in the situation presented by Mr. Crawford. The video of the incident sure looks like sos. You decide if that was warranted by Crawford’s behavior and that the officer had no alternative but to open fire.

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_John_Crawford_III#Shooting

      • I think I read that it was discovered that the officer who shot did not in fact have the required training and was fired.
        Kids do not have developed brains and are not able to think things thru.
        IMPO the city reg about SOS was wrong as was the training given all of the officers.
        I can understand, given the history over many years, that the Black community felt that the police force was in fact treating Blacks differently than they treated whites.
        I have seen other police interactions with citizens and have observed that there are many officers who are able to handle calls without resorting to their guns. The very fact that the officer claims to be “in fear for my life” when shooting mostly black men IMO means that training is lacking. Example. St. Paul MN. The black passenger calmly stated that he had a CC license and was in fact following the NRA guidelines when he was killed-because apparently black men frighten police officers. Apparently this is true even when the person shot and killed is also a police officer, who just happened to be black.
        A larger problem is that other officers present provide cover for the officer who shoots and kills a young black man. Chicago, dash cam footage clearly shows the young man calmly walking AWAY from several officers, then 1 pulls his service pistol and empties an entire clip into the person, every cop in their reports stated that the officer had no choice but to kill him as the victim was threatening the police with a knife. It took an entire year before the Chicago police released the footage. Fact. plainclothes police, that very morning went to every business in that area and took their security footage.
        The fact is that every officer lied in their reports to cover for the shooter. If not for phone cams that almost everyone has, we would not know what really happened. Report SC. a white officer shoots down a black motorist running away from him. Claiming that the Black man took his Taser. Film from a nearby witness shows the officer removing something from his belt and dropping it next to the person he killed.
        Despite the fact that police haven’t been convicted, despite film evidence, from Rodney King to the present day, this officer was tried, got a hung jury, then pled guilty before being retried. All I can say is that police officers across the country appear to me to be on a hair trigger. I for one, being well over 65 and the owner of several DA revolvers find the current state of affairs totally inexplicable. I had an uncle who was a Michigan State Police Officer who never pulled his weapon in his entire career. Had another uncle who was a Police Sgt in Seattle, after 20 years in the AF, who also retired from the force and never pulled his service pistol.
        Far too many officers do not continue training with their service pistols after their basic training, causing far too many police officers firing off a great many rounds and mostly missing

  5. They all look real enough in the split second someone has to make a life and death decision. Sitting on the table, I can easily tell that several are CO2 or air pump guns, because I’ve owned them myself as a kid. #1 is the easiest to recognize, but I wouldn’t risk my life on being wrong. I’d rather risk the life of the one brandishing it, threatening people with it, and refusing police commands to disarm.

  6. And then there are the ones that thugs paint the muzzle orange to disguise a real gun as a toy…point a gun at me, real or not, I’m going to take your life…

    • We’re going to need some cited examples of that actually happening.
      A criminal WANTS the Gun he’s carrying to be considered real by anyone he brandished it at… it makes no sense for him to disguise a real one since he’ll be going out of his way to avoid dealing with law enforcement anyway.

      Air guns are the second-most-stolen items in many sporting goods stores (knives are #1), one can only imagine the various types of bad ideas those casual shoplifters are planning with their stolen airguns later that day – while also planning to simply toss the toy in the nearest trash can as soon as they’ve accomplished their dirty deed.

      …good Lord, I hate airsoft guns… way more problems than benefits having those things in my store…

  7. An idiot pointed an unloaded pellet gun at a sales associate in my store this week while threatening to shoot him. It was a stupid jest. The associate, who was relieving another during the other’s lunch period, did not know a pellet gun from a “real” gun and was understandably frightened.

    I’m so happy that I wasn’t there. The miscreant, who is still breathing, would be happier if he only knew how close he came to being dead.

  8. The Gucci bag is most definitely fake. Thats a real working holster though.

    Also, BPD isn’t quizzing. They’re …uh….trying to settle a bet. Yeah that’s it.

    • THEY’RE NOT TRYING TO SETTLE A BET. If they can get you to agree to a ban on ‘fake’ or ‘toy’ guns’, then they’re one step closer to banning all guns.

      Here’s the (eventual) argument from them:

      ‘IF TOY GUNS ARE WORTH BANNING FOR “SAFETY” THEN SHOULDN’T REAL GUNS BE BANNED FOR SAFETY???”

      No. BAN COPS THAT NEED THAT MUCH SAFETY.

      BAN ALL AHOLES THAT ARE WILLING TO DO THAT TO YOU IN THE BULLSHIT NAME OF “SAFETY.”.

      • THE TRUCK IS, THE “COPS” GOT YOU TO LOOK AT A LINE-UP AND SAY THAT ALL IN THE LINE UP WERE BAD.

        GET A PICTURE OF LINE UP OF FIVE COPS OR FIVE OF YOUR STATE’S REPRESENTATIVES, AND ASK, CAN YOU TELL WHICH IS THE “BAD” COP?, OR THE “REPRESENTATIVE WHO’S VIOLATING YOUR RIGHTS TO DO TYRANNY?

        • The “TRICK”, not the truck.

          The no edit feature gets more clicks? (Foe some of us, trying to hit the smallish letters on our cell phone keyboard, is like typing with your knee)

  12. Real…Fake….Irreverent…Point one at the wrong person at the wrong time and you’ll likely wind up dead or bleeding profusely from one or more gun shot wounds. Unfortunately in today’s society you must always assume it’s real.

  15. The officer driving made a tactical mistake by driving so close that it put the passenger officer in a perceived danger by having no cover and brought the threat so close that the shooting officer felt compelled to fire. That of course was not the intent but unwittingly put his fellow officer in a situation had limited options assuming the gun had to be taken as real. That is the tragedy but the reality was not knowable in the fraction of a second available to the shooting officer.

  17. When the most liberal gun control man or women wakes in the middle of the night having any one of those pointed at them, think they can tell what’s real? I can tell you what would be real, the stained sheets.

  18. I knew a prison warden whose inmates used left over soap blocks to mold a fake gun and then painted it with black shoe polish. It was realistic enough to stage an escape.

  19. Shoot first ask questions later and go for Qualified Immunity. I support good cops. I don’t support Bad cops. There is no situation that is so bad that a cop can’t make it worse. Unfortunately, cops protect cops. That makes them (most) Bad cops. Many come from the Military. War mind set. And, the Training they receive is Aggressive. Do you remember the cases where one cops arrested another cop for an offense and the arresting cop was trashed over and over again? My dream jobs: To be a cop on cops. A Judge on Judges and the one that makes the rules/laws that Politicians have to follow or go to Jail. Those rules/laws would be the same ones we have to follow now. Just join the Institute for Justice e-mail and read case after case of the Government overstepping and cops not being prosecuted for crimes we would go to jail for.

  20. If you point a weapon at someone, trying to fool them into thinking it’s real and responds by killing you, congratulations ……..YOU DID

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