Airsoft Guns That Don't Look Real

Is It A Existent Gun, Or Is It Airsoft?

Cody Tucker of Washington land helped celebrate a friend's 14th birthday with a nine-hour Airsoft battle. Chana Joffe-Walt for NPR hibernate caption

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Chana Joffe-Walt for NPR

Cody Tucker of Washington state helped celebrate a friend's 14th birthday with a nine-hr Airsoft battle.

Chana Joffe-Walt for NPR

The camouflaged revelers at the birthday bash. Chana Joffe-Walt for NPR hide caption

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Chana Joffe-Walt for NPR

The inconspicuous revelers at the altogether bash.

Chana Joffe-Walt for NPR

On a hot afternoon, the final day of schoolhouse, 2 police force officers on patrol in Newman, Calif., got a written report from a frantic older woman about a teenager in a car, armed and seemingly brazen. They located the boy in minutes.

There he was. A 15-year-old sitting in the driver's seat of a vehicle and carelessly pointing what looked to be a Beretta 96 handgun out the window.

The two police force officers approached the machine.

"We both drew our service weapons and pointed information technology at the child and telling him to drop the weapon. Drop the weapon," 1 officer said.

Just the teen turned toward the commanding vocalism, pointing the gun where he looked. During the 2d information technology took the officer to ready his finger on the trigger, he spotted a tiny dot of orange on the teen's gun butt. He hesitated, and the kid dropped his weapon.

Information technology was a toy. In fact, information technology's a toy that seems to be landing in the hands of immature people more and more.

Airsoft guns are the hottest new type of toy replica guns. They shoot lightweight plastic Bbs, come in models ranging from sniper guns to machine guns, and can cost hundreds of dollars. Their bright orangish tips help distinguish them from real guns, but the tips are pretty easy to break off or paint over. And the Airsoft guns are designed to wait as real as possible — and then real that police, teachers and parents often tin't tell the deviation.

In Arkansas, constabulary shot and killed a 12-year-old boy walking outside his apartment complex with a replica toy gun. Young people have been killed in like circumstances in at to the lowest degree three other states.

The Airsoft guns are especially popular among teenage boys.

"I think they're cool 'cuz they're guns, and most boys like guns and if they don't they're weird," says Eric Deal of Washington land, who was jubilant his 14th birthday with a ix-hour Airsoft boxing with friends in his backyard.

His mom, Rebecca Deal, says she has mixed feelings about the toy guns.

"When my children were little, we had rules. You don't shoot each other. We could shoot monsters, aliens, dinosaurs and robots because they weren't real," she says. "And then then comes Airsoft, and all of those rules were blown out of the water."

On the other hand, she says, Airsoft helped her ordinarily shy son make friends and get out of the business firm, abroad from video games.

Some school districts and cities take already banned replica guns like Airsoft. And the Newman police department wants to run across a federal ban.

The police principal sums up the effect this way: Young people see Airsoft toys — they're pretending; they don't realize nosotros are not.

Chana Joffe-Walt reports from member station KPLU.