April 17, 2010 permalink
Guns That Look Like Toys
Baltimore Police Department: Guns That Look Like Toys. Not a lot of info on this one, and the police report is from a couple of years ago, but have the criminals finally figured out that the law requiring toy guns to be clearly painted in comical neon colors can work both ways? How come these all seem to have been painted by the same gun shop in Wisconsin?
On the flip side this reminds me of the Entertech uzi motorized water gun I had as a kid (check out this commercial – almost unthinkable now, but I remember having a lot of fun with it at the time). These were pretty much the last realistically-painted gun toys sold in large stores in America after legislation passed in many states in 1988 following multiple incidents of children being mistakenly shot and killed by the police. That cultural shift led into the Super Soaker generation, which is actually a pretty fascinating story in and of itself.
(Via Schneier on Security, who reports that there a posters warning about painted guns in the NYC subways currently)