Cops Arrest 9YR Old at Gunpoint

[Rie&BugsMom]

Wow, I found this shocking !!!

[stayinghome]

This may sound stupid or naive, but after reading that I am wondering WHY they make toy guns, when they can get mistaken for the real thing and cause so much trouble?

:

[Rie&BugsMom]

HeatherE, I feel the same way. What I found really interesting is that in this day and age with the "ban on weapons", etc...is why on earth a mother would allow her ds to have a weapon that was spray painted black to look like a real weapon, out in public like that.

I look at two ways: 1) The mother put her 9yr old at a serious risk, due to either ignorance and naivity....and 2) How awful things have become that a 9 yr old would be traumatized to this extent just for having a toy weapon that is legal to buy and carry around in the first place.

[dentente]

OMG. I was in Fry's Electronics the other day and they had a display of BB guns that looked EXACTLY like Glock and S&W 9mm handguns.

Scary. Nothing in the coloration or design to distinguish them from the real deal.

WHY?!!!!!!


Denny

[Hannah's Mom]

Something similar happened in my area not that long ago. Three kids (I want to say they were around 10 or 12) were running around before school playing with very realistic looking guns. Someone called the cops and when they responded one cop drew his weapon and ordered the boys to the ground. I don't really blame the cops in that situation. When the guns look so real, they have to err on the side of caution or someone could be killed. In the OP's story, I do think the cops overreacted, not necessarily by ordering the boy to drop the gun with weapons drawn, but by arresting him and carting him off in a police car and not letting his mom near him then arresting her, too.

In my area (Southeastern US), some feel that the "right to bear arms" extends to the right to let their children play with toy guns. That mentality, unfortunately, can sometimes have devastating consequences. A year ago a man down the street from me was shot and killed by his 3-year-old grandson when he was getting ready to go to the shooting range. The man's wife was quoted in the paper as saying something to the effect that the boy didn't know the difference between toy guns and real guns and probably thought it was a toy bc he plays with toy guns. So now a man is dead and the poor little boy gets to grow up knowing he killed his grandpa, all because his parents/guardians let him play with toy guns, didn't teach him the difference (or he was too little to understand the difference), and someone left a real gun within his reach.

[Arduinna]

I'm conflicted on this myself. One the one hand having a toy gun is not illegal, although the circumstances in this case defy logic. Why would a mother allow her kid to play with a gun that was painted to look real?? And in public no less. But I'm not sure how all of the charges can stick. One, the kid wasn't running around acting like he was shooting people or pretending to rob anyone. Not sure who is really guilty of "inciting a panic" the 9 year old sitting on a bench alone, minding his own business, or the guy driving by that called the cops? now, if he was going into stores and pretending to rob, or pointing it at people or being threatening, that is a whole nother matter. That would be inciting a panic.

Considering that police have killed children in the past that have had toy guns because they thought they were real, I honestly think that toy guns should be outlawed, or in the very least required to look fake. Like maybe bright pink space guns or something?

DH told me years ago he was out on Halloween and someone came into a club he was at with a very obvious fake (funky color ect) machine gun replica. Cops showed up and freaked anyway. So I'm not sure if anything can stop this kind of thing.

I think the moms being arrested for questioning what police were doing with her minor child is crap though. Parents have a right to know what ANYONE even the cops are doing with their kid. Why are poice threatened by questions?

I think they really overreacted in this situation.

[Hannah's Mom]

nursing mother - didn't mean to imply that all toy guns are bad and kids should never play with them. My brothers and I played with guns when we were kids, too. I don't think that's necessarily bad IF you know your kids can play responsibly with them and know the difference between real and fake guns and the guns don't look TOO real especially when they are out in public (for their own safety as stories like the OP's and my example of the kids in my area show).

[~ATenthMuse~]

nak

i watched this on the 11 o'clock news...the boy found the gun lying on the ground somewhere...it was already painted to look realistic. arresting the kid after the officer realized the gun was a fake? very wrong!

willingly admit that my 8 yr old plays with pretend guns, knives, swords. they never leave the house though. he is obsessed with all things military and police related, but that is to be expected since he has had a military family and dh is in law enforcement now. i don't like it but right now i think (in our case) the tv is a bigger problem than the pretend weapons.

[Rie&BugsMom]

Mom2a&a - ending comment very good point !!

[detergentdiva]

My family doesn;t understand why I don't let the kids play with guns. Guns are not toys. Yes the boys make believe and make their own but I will NOT ever all a toy gun that resembles a real gun into my house period.
It doesn's say in the article where the kid got the gun but if it came from his house or his mother had knowledge for it then she needs to be knocked upside the head for her pure stupidity in allowing her child to remove a toy gun that so closely resembles a real gun from the house.
She is lucky her kid wasn't shot. I feel no pity for her.

[steph]

well we had a situation a few weeks ago.... while have a yard sale, our neighbors across the street - college age guys who we've seen with real guns during hunting season, came outside with what appeared to be a very real rifle. The picked it up and aimed it right at our house, right at our dd!!!! I FREAKED!!! I started yelling "Excuse me, you're pointing a GUN at us!!"... They quickly lowered it and said, "it's only a toy!".... Huh! I don't give a sh#T! wheather it's a toy or not - one does not point guns of any sort at a person!

[merpk]

Sort of relevant, sort of irrelevant, but a story ...

My family went to Israel for my brother's bar mitzvah. This is the summer of 1973, we're talking about. My bro&I flew with an aunt and some cousins a few weeks ahead of the rest of the family.

Well, my genius brother brought a toy gun with him. A very realistic looking toy gun. On an El Al plane.

Not a good move.

For point of information, El Al did then and still does fully search everyone who gets on a plane. Children, everyone.

Well, they found bro's toy. And the flight was held up for over 7 hours ... 7 hours ... while security tried to figure out if the gun was at all usable and what to do with it ... and what to do with my poor 13 yo brother.

The pilot held the toy gun through the flight and they gave it back upon landing at Lod.

Postscript ... a teenaged friend of a cousin took the toy gun from my brother while we were there, and used it to try to rob a grocery store. The friend was arrested, the gun taken by the police. End of gun, end of story.















If the gun ain't a bright fluorescent color and transparent (ie., obviously a water pistol or some such) it is a danger to the person carrying it, and to anyone nearby.

And to any police officers who might see someone handling it ... because they might react as one would expect police officers to react when they see a gun being handled ...














(That was for my 19mo who is watching me type this and keeps saying "bye-bye" and waving in time to this little guy in the smilie box on the left ... )

[DaryLLL]

Wow, Amy, what a story.

Very conflicted about the gun issue, as my dh's PA relatives are the type to give a kid a BB gun for his 8th birthday, and while no one seems to hunt deer anymore, they do target practice with rifles in the yard.

Here, we do not allow any guns except bright orange and blue goofy looking super soakers, if ds really begs for one, and they usually break after a day or two and that's that.

Being a child of the 50's, back then it was all about cowboys and Indians, and the more authentically Western your "rifle" looked, the better. And when you got "shot," make sure to "die" convincingly too!