Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forumFatal Texas shooting highlights struggle to regulate replica guns
By Susan Ferriss, iWatch News
The fatal police shooting earlier this month of a Texas middle school student clutching a BB gun -- the latest in a series of incidents involving imitation firearms -- spotlights how localities and states have struggled to identify and control both look-alike toys and guns that fire something other than bullets.
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While real school shootings are rare, children show up at schools with imitation guns often enough to raise concerns, especially among law enforcement personnel. In California, for example, about 1,330 school suspensions were issued to students for bringing imitation firearms to school during the 2010-11 academic year, according to state data analyzed by the Center for Public Integrity. Seventy California students were expelled for this offense during the same year.
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Regulation of imitation guns exists but is limited at the federal level. Instead, a confusing patchwork of laws to regulate the sale, use, and color of replicas has developed among states and communities. But whenever proposals to restrict imitation guns come up, controversy and opposition are sure to follow.
The state of California was the scene of such a high-stakes battle over an attempt at "look-alike" gun control last year. A measure to impose mandatory bright color requirements on all BB and pellet guns -- so that police could easily identify them as imitation -- failed under a heavy campaign of criticism from gun rights groups and others that it was misguided.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-center-for-public-integrity/fatal-texas-shooting-high_b_1204490.html
Why do you think so many children and teenagers bring replica guns to school despite knowing the consequences?
friendly_iconoclast
(15,333 posts)one-eyed fat man
(3,201 posts)When elementary school children get expelled for for violating the school's weapon policy because the plastic army men in a Veteran's Day project having teeny weeny bazookas and machine guns school administrators have raised "organizational dumbass" to Olympic levels!
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/boys-army-hat-violates-drugs-and-weapons-policy-at-us-school-in-rhode-island/story-e6frf7jx-1225880898797
Incidents like this are inevitably followed by calls to have toy and replica guns painted in unmistakable garish colors. Normally this comes from people who do not possess two functioning brain cells they can claim as their own.
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/07/local/la-me-lapd-fake-guns-20110607
What amazes them is that the criminal's capacity to exploit such laws. To them it makes perfect sense that criminals would follow this law. The same brands of spray paint he uses to tag his gang signs all over every unblemished surface comes in garish colors which can be used to disguise his real gun to look like a toy. "Pimp my Glock Pink" is one choice....
Do-gooders or prohibitionists consistently and completely underestimate a criminal's capacity for creativity in evading whatever simplistic crap "solution" they promote. Here a thug has a fully functioning sawed-off 12 gauge shotgun concealed as part of a fully functioning squirt gun.
http://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2009/11/09/super-soaker-shotgun/
All this does is give the police an out when they shoot a kid with a black squirt gun.
ileus
(15,396 posts)spin
(17,493 posts)and register their serial numbers. Perhaps we could make any replica gun that was black and looked like a military weapon illegal.
We could require an NICS background check for anyone who wished to buy one and require all replica guns to be safely stored. We could require anyone who takes a replica gun out of his house to have a replica gun carry license.
We could set a legal age for owning any replica gun or toy gun and require adult supervision for all children who are playing with toy guns.
We could do all this and still not accomplish a damn thing. And we probably will.
We_Have_A_Problem
(2,112 posts)...they are stupid and natural selection is a bitch?
Of course, the situation in Brownsville wasn't quite so innocent. It appears the corpse was dumb enough to not only NOT drop the gun but to point it at the officers who shot him.
Toy or not, I cannot fault the officers for not waiting for the idiot to pull the trigger to find out it was a toy.
JustABozoOnThisBus
(23,283 posts)but in fact this one was no toy. It was a pellet or bb gun, and could cause harm. Point one at a cop and bad things can happen.
Kids do stupid things because they don't fully understand consequences.
montanto
(2,966 posts)Where do they learn the consequences? From their parents? As a person who is exposed to other peoples kids all day long, I can tell you that not all parents teach their kids the things that others among us assume are common sense.
ellisonz
(27,709 posts)...to be brought to schools. A zero-tolerance policy is sent home with the child and admittedly it might be up to the parent to explain the consequences. I'm just saying, it's not a secret to the child that this is unacceptable and punishable behavior.
I think they often do it as an expression of rage...a sort of look how cool I am, I have a toy that can hurt someone.
Atypical Liberal
(5,412 posts)...to be brought to schools. A zero-tolerance policy is sent home with the child and admittedly it might be up to the parent to explain the consequences. I'm just saying, it's not a secret to the child that this is unacceptable and punishable behavior.
I think they often do it as an expression of rage...a sort of look how cool I am, I have a toy that can hurt someone.
When *I* was a kid - elementary school, I was constantly sneaking toys to school in my bookbag to show off an play with another kid on the school bus. Including toy cap guns.
It had nothing to do with an expression of rage. It was simply cool to play with cap guns. At the time there was a line of very realistic-looking cap guns that my friends and I favored. They had just started putting orange plugs in the ends of the barrels but we would use my woodburning kit to melt it out and remove it.
I was disappointed this year as I shopped for Christmas presents for my 3-year-old. I wanted to find him some good-looking toy guns to play with. Unfortunately all the big-box stores had were garish-looking plastic fantasy toys. The closest thing I saw that looked like an actual "gun" was a Star Wars stormtrooper blaster. I ended up getting him a Buzz Lightyear Nerf shooter.
After I had given up I found online that you can get fairly realistic looking Airsoft guns for about 30 bucks. That might be just the thing for him (without BBs, of course).
ellisonz
(27,709 posts)...those are just cool.
montanto
(2,966 posts)and sorry for the late reply, but I still think there is a huge assumption here that someone is telling students what can/will happen to them if they bring such an object (toy gun specifically) to school. You say "Schools generally make pretty clear . . . " [by sending home a note stating that kids may not bring a toy gun to school and that there is zero tolerance, and consequences for that]. In fourteen years of daily presence on an inner city high school campus in southern California, where one LAUSD student dies violently every school day (not on campus, mind you), I have never seen such a notice. Further, it has not until now occurred to me that I should say to my students, "You know, if, while playing in the streets, you carry an airsoft pistol that looks like a real 1911, you might get your ass shot off." After all, how should I know what toys the students have if they have them when I am not supposed to see them? "It might be up to the parent to explain . . ." It is ABSOLUTELY up to the parent to explain. It is absolutely the parent's obligation to protect their child from a situation in which they might accidentally get shot because they have a toy that looks like a real gun. What's the alternative, It's my responsibility? Kids bring shit that they aren't supposed to have to school all the time. If we teachers were cops, we could search the students. We are not cops. We aren't the kids parents either. If a kid doesn't know what "common sense" dictates, then it is the parent's job to fill in the blanks, considering that "common sense" isn't as common as we sometimes think.
ellisonz
(27,709 posts)...I went to Pasadena USD and it was always made pretty clear to us that we were not to bring such items to school. I'm pretty sure just about every year we were sent home with or given a lengthy statement of policy on conduct and standards. This was post Columbine mind you...
LAUSD, like many of our school districts, needs a new curriculum, and a great emphasis on community engagement. What do you think of Green Dot schools?
http://www.greendot.org/
montanto
(2,966 posts)but toy guns are not specified. Real guns are specified, of course, and that situation comes up from time to time too. My point is mainly that it is a parent's job to inform their kids. Parents give toys like that and then tell them "go play in the yard" without teaching them the possible dangers. Kids also bring inappropriate stuff to school to "show off" to their friends. They are thinking of showing off, not about how they are about to get their heads blown off. Control of these things needs to come from home, not from teachers who have no authority over such stuff as might be in a student's backpack.
Off topic: Community engagement: We are creating new schools to address this issue. As we speak, I am part of a new school designed by teachers, one of the cornerstones of which is community engagement. All of this comes through grassroots reform called "school choice." Charters have won a few slots, but ground up teacher designed schools have won more, and are performing better when you consider the advantages that charters get (like public funding on top of private funding).
Off topic: Green Dot? I'm not a fan of charter schools at all. All of the high school charters in Los Angeles have at least this in common: Job 1 is making sure that their scores look good. Job 2 is get rid of students that make their scores look bad. Job 3 is to look busy in case anyone asks what's happening with the taxpayers' money. Every year about October LAUSD schools get a fresh influx of students who scored poorly at charters. Their scores go up, ours go down, they get the praise for increasing "performance," and we get the blame for low achievement. LAUSD is dedicated to educating all comers. The charters are dedicated to serving who they choose to serve. Not exactly the spirit of public education. They also run on public funding, in public buildings, and yet they don't have to reach the same stringent standards that the rest of us do. Not to mention that the teachers get paid less (though to be fair they don't need to work nearly as hard, since they get to keep the more compliant and motivated students, and they don't really need to meet state standards anyway) and they don't have union protection, which may undermine the rest of us at some point. Bottom line is, even though they "cream" students, they don't perform any better than we do, which means that even though the access disparity is on their side, we do a better job.
ellisonz
(27,709 posts)...and when we can do things to make their jobs easier from a policy perspective - I think that's a good thing.
I think you and I agree on education reform generally, the public school system needs to be more engaging, and splitting it up isn't the way to go. I think the main things we need to get back to is building new schools, reducing class sizes, and increasing community engagement so that schools produce responsible citizens. I think we can both agree that the failure that leads to high rates of gun violence starts at home, carries through the schools, and manifests itself in adult life. I think it's sad that the debate we were having in the late 90s in California about school reform has largely gone to the wayside with the economic collapse. We are not well-positioned for a fruitful future and that is why so many of us are concerned about the colliding wave of ignorance and guns being combustible.
Thank you for your insightful comments.
We_Have_A_Problem
(2,112 posts)...the kid learned the consequences the hard way. Too bad for him - but good thing for the gene pool.
If you make it to your mid-teens and don't realize that pointing a toy gun at someone with a real one is a Very Bad Thing, that's really your own damn fault.
Sympathy? Nope- fresh the fuck out.
montanto
(2,966 posts)At a certain point, assuming that the parents have done their job in raising their kid, in teaching him/her that a toy gun that looks exactly like a real gun can cause a very real reaction, then there is nowhere else to turn to in the blame game. The kid was stupid and paid the ultimate price for it. My point was simply that there are plenty of parents who give things to their kids to get the kids off their backs. They don't always mention that you could get yourself killed with such a toy. If I had a kid, giving a toy like that would be part of the teaching process for owning the real thing. I would teach that the realistic toy was to be treated exactly as though it were the real thing, thus avoiding all of this kind of trouble (unless my kid were really stupid, and pointed the fucking thing at a cop, at which point I could only kick myself for having fathered such a dumbass).
mistertrickster
(7,062 posts)On Jan. 4, in Brownsville, Texas, a panicked assistant principal called 911 and reported that a student was in a hallway brandishing a black gun. Police entered and later said that they repeatedly warned Jaime Gonzalez Jr. to drop his weapon before an officer fatally shot him. It turned out the boy, 15, had a black "nonpowder" BB gun that closely resembled a high-powered Glock firearm, according to police.
On edit--one wonders though why the asst principal didn't just ask the kid what he was doing, ask if the gun were loaded, what kind of gun it was. That's what I would have done. Sounds a little like gun-derangement syndrome on his/her part.
PavePusher
(15,374 posts)and you'd try to interrogate him before calling police?
I really don't think that's in the A.P.'s job description/requirements.
mistertrickster
(7,062 posts)as a gun collector, I'm not hysterically afraid of guns either.
In this case, panic and terror of the gun did more harm than the gun itself.
PavePusher
(15,374 posts)No-one is under any moral or legal obligation to confront an apparently armed person while themselves disarmed (by law, I might add). What do you think could have occured had it been a real gun?
I'd say the most appropriate actions were taken: alert police and try to clear the immediate area.
mistertrickster
(7,062 posts)I would have done it differently. Yes, they did everything by the book, no one can fault them. And a 15 year old kid is dead.
I suspect the Asst. Principal doesn't know guns. And he-she apparently doesn't know the students very well either . . .
Tejas
(4,759 posts)mistertrickster
(7,062 posts)wow, you could put an eye out with that thing.
Gun hysteria.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts).. whether or not it's a real gun or a bb gun.
I'm sure you'll be able to successfully tell three or four of them before the odds catch up with you.
mistertrickster
(7,062 posts)oneshooter
(8,614 posts)Confinscated a delivery of Airsoft AR's and declared that they could be modified to fire full auto with real ammo.
Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)(about 1:20 in the video)
burf
(1,164 posts)put a magazine of real ammo in the weapon and fire away. I don't think he would do too well after round one or two.
He also did not seem to be too comfortable handling the weapon for a guy who supposedly handles them for a living.
X_Digger
(18,585 posts)Nor does the "lower receiver" have a hammer that would strike a firing pin (assuming you fit a real upper on it.)
Our tax dollars at work.
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)SteveW
(754 posts)"Why do you think so many children and teenagers bring replica guns to school despite knowing the consequences?"
Probably because these kids know next to nothing about firearms, let alone the consequences of bringing them to school. Perhaps they are "banned" by a kid's parents, or guns have been treated as a prohibitionist "no-no" -- like sex and pot-smoking. This can lead some adventuresome kids to indulge in the taboo.
I rather suspect this kid was acting out a cultural "demand:" To strut about like a thug wannabe, gun-in-hand (however low-powered) and when told -- repeatedly -- to drop the gun, quite simply refused, this in order to complete the circle of hardness and defiance. This cultural demand in some cases may exceed that which the family, school or other institutions can provide as an alternative. As for "knowing the consequences," this may juice up the act of defiance in the eyes of admirers.
I am not sure what "mandatory bright color requirements on all BB and pellet guns" will accomplish, since these measures can be easily defeated, and since some of the "brightly colored" pellet guns can inflict fatal injuries at close range and may constitute a real danger to others -- one which once again requires disarmament, and possibly the cycle of defiance.
"I rather suspect this kid was acting out a cultural "demand:" To strut about like a thug wannabe, gun-in-hand (however low-powered) and when told -- repeatedly -- to drop the gun, quite simply refused, this in order to complete the circle of hardness and defiance. This cultural demand in some cases may exceed that which the family, school or other institutions can provide as an alternative. As for "knowing the consequences," this may juice up the act of defiance in the eyes of admirers."
Or he was mentally ill and untreated...
SteveW
(754 posts)Mental illness is too often shorthand for "I can't come up with any other explanation that fits my worldview."
And it certainly is cited as reason to prohibit or excuse this or that.
I've seen it too often, ellisonz, on a "smaller scale:" The drunken frat rat on 6th Street who is ordered to get out of the right-of-way by police, who nevertheless closes his eyes half-way and pushes out his naked chest in defiance. Several times. Until he is forcibly seized by police, whereupon he fights back and inevitably loses.
Only in these "mental" cases, he sues the cops later.
ellisonz
(27,709 posts)...my money is on seriously troubled, and not thug wannabe in this case.
virginia mountainman
(5,046 posts)Anyone significant????
Didn't think so...
Remmah2
(3,291 posts)The National Replica Association.