“Throughout the summer months, Shipley said Maryland State Police troopers and other law enforcement officers will likely use common sense to assess the level of danger associated with water guns. ‘If you see a kid in a bathing suit who’s running down the street carrying one of those he’s likely not converted it,’ Shipley said. ‘If you see a guy while responding to a bank for an alarm, it’s important to know he may have converted it from a water gun.’ Shipley said situations like this are ‘just another example of why it’s tough to be a police officer.'” – Modified water guns pose danger, delmarvanow.com

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14 COMMENTS

  1. So now we are all at risk of being shot on sight by the cops for carrying a brightly colored super soaker? Swell….

  2. Back in the late 1980s, growing up just outside Oklahoma City in a little town named Yukon, by friend and I would “play Army” with actual M-16 and AK-47 rubber training rifles obtained by his dad, an artillery commander at Ft. Sill. To this day, I thank God we weren’t shot while walking down the street with those things. The LEOs are definitely in a tougher spot now, having to decide what’s an honest threat versus what’s a harmless toy.

  3. When I was ten years old, I lived for several months in a small California town population 3,000. My friend and I could walk down main street with our BB guns and no one would bother us. Even back then it would never have been tolerated in the suburbs of Chicago were I moved back too. Danger to the police and all of us can now easily come from children and thugs carrying squirt-gun shotguns. Yeah, times have changed.

  4. I converted my H&R Pardner pump shotgun into a Super Soaker. Do you think I’ll have a problem at the beach?

    • It’s one of the many ways BG’s use confusion to their advantage. “I don’t know why my friend (dirtbag accomplice) was shot! He only had a squirt gun (which was converted to a shotgun and used in 3 prior felonies) with him! He was profiled! This would have never happened if he was (insert appropriate race / ethnicity / etc…).” And then the lawsuit comes…

  7. Does anyone else here think that the tactical sling and black barrel should be more of a giveaway than the who-what-when-where?

  8. On a more sarcastic note, when is California, where the gun in the picture was found, going to close the assault super soaker loophole. They need to be capped at one ounce per trigger pull and ten ounces per tank. That way the BGs can’t get too many suits wet in downtown LA before they have to find a water hose.

  9. Alternatively, you could fill a squirt gun with gasoline. A taser, gunfire, etc. would then trigger the fire. It’s best not to point anything at an LEO, including a laser pointer.

  10. There’s dang few items that cannot be converted into some kind of improvised weapon. Pointing a finger at the wrong person under the wrong circumstances can get a body killed these days. Of course, any time a citizen gets shot LEOs will figure out some way to justify the shooting. The only safe way to approach a LEO is naked and even that will assuredly get you thrown in jail.
    [W3]

  11. I recall in the early 90s that some brothers (and sisters!) used soakers (or just simple mason jars) to shoot battery acid, or whatever they found under the kitchen sink at each other. If you know Philadelphia, you know the neighborhoods where this supposedly happened.

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