Why Can’t My Black Son Have A Toy Gun?

Can black children have toy guns? Are the police too trigger happy? How much information should the police try to get before they start shooting?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/04/30/why-can-t-my-black-son-have-a-toy-gun.html


Angel Terry/Alamy
Goldie Taylor
GOLDIE TAYLOR
‘WHAT COPS DO’04.29.16 9:08 PM ET
Why Can’t My Black Son Have A Toy Gun?
Ask the moms of Dedric Colvin and Tamir Rice: Playing while black shouldn’t be such an unfairly dangerous game.
“It’s not real, it's not real!” the boy reportedly shouted.
Within seconds of him saying that, a witness says that a plainclothes Baltimore city police officer shot 14-year-old Dedric Colvin twice—in the shoulder and the leg. The Daisy spring-air pellet gun in his possession, designed by the manufacturer to look like Beretta 9 mm automatic pistol, was recovered at the scene and bagged as evidence. He was hospitalized with what police call “non-life threatening injuries.”
Dedric is black, and there are those who will invariably question his behavior when confronted by police. And, still others who will defend his right to the very same toys that countless white children play with every day.

African Americans want law enforcement to see their children through the same lens of innocence.
Daisy is “the most recognized brand of air guns,” says the company website. Their products can be purchased online or at any Walmart store in the country. I know, because my son owned one. In fact, Joshua saved his allowance, birthday and holiday gift money to purchase at least three pellet guns when he was a teenager.
The rules were simple: Stay close to home, never point it at any living thing, leave the orange safety tip in place and surrender it to police officers on demand.
Once, a neighbor saw him playing with a spring-powered rifle in the woods behind our house. We’d only lived in the suburban subdivision for a few weeks, but I imagine that being the only black family in an otherwise all-white enclave of houses did not help matters.
Joshua was on his way home when the squad cars roared down our street, he told me. Their commands were firm and direct. They told him to drop the “weapon,” which still had its orange safety tip, and demanded to see his hands. Meanwhile, one officer kept his hand on his holstered service revolver as he spoke.
“It’s not real,” he assured them.
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“Where do you live? Are your parents home?” one of responding officers asked, examining the toy.
Dedric Colvin
via Facebook
Dedric Colvin
“No, sir,” my son said, tipping his head toward our yard. “My mom is at work,” he said.
“Do yourself a favor and keep this in the house.”
It was 2005 and my son was 14—the same age as Dedric—and we are black.
His father and I never directly purchased toy guns for any of our children, nor did we specifically ban them. We were confident then, as I am now, that our children would act responsibility whether or not we were present. It was, admittedly, naïve of me to believe that that would be enough.
I was not home that day and, looking back, the mere thought of what could have happened to my son is terrifying. What if he had cut and run, like Dedric reportedly did? Or what if, like 12-year-old Tamir Rice, he had done nothing at all?
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The shooting incident in Baltimore comes some 17 months after Tamir was fatally shot by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann—a rookie with a bad training record. Tamir, who was playing with an air-soft gun in a snowy park near a recreational center, was killed within seconds of Loehmann’s appearance. He never had a chance to respond to a command, if one was indeed ever given. Tamir was struck once in the chest and died the following day.
Likewise, Dedric was shot near the corner of East Baltimore and Aisquith Streets, in an area lined with dilapidated commercial structures, a church and a recreational center. Commissioner Kevin Davis said two detectives in an unmarked car spotted the teenager carrying what they thought was a gun. Davis says the officers identified themselves and that Dedric ran.
A witness, a man only identified as Bryan, said police officers ordered the boy to drop the gun. “[He] turned towards them but he wasn’t turning the gun towards them and I’m positive I heard him say, ‘It’s not real,’” he told WBAL-TV.
The teenager motioned the pellet gun upward, Bryan explained, and never pointed the toy toward the officers.

 

I had toy guns when I was young and my brother and I used to play with them outside. There's a kid down the street from me that has a toy that looks like an automatic rifle and he plays with it on the street when he's walking his dog. If I or this kid were Black and living in America would we be able to do that?

 

There was a time when kids, no matter their color, could run around with air guns, regardless the law, and not get shot by Police. In those days there was far less crime, and LEO was far less stressed. Today is different, especially in major cities like Baltimore. The law has always said that kids with air guns have to be supervised by an adult, and that targets and backstops have to be capable of stopping the projectiles. Running around the city with a real looking airgun is a far cry from the law and common sense.

 

I'm sorry but if you are an irresponsible enough parent to buy you're kid a toy gun that looks just like a real gun, let them remove the orange safety tip, and let them run around unsupervised and play with them...well then you are a terrible parent and if a cop reacts as if that gun is real it isn't the cops fault.

 

A black son can't have a toy gun that is black... though maybe no one should.

 

Because young blacks commit far too many violent crimes for cops to take any chances.

So you have two choices. You can...

1. Tell the cops to stay away from black neighborhoods, which they will have no problems with doing because they would rather eat donuts than get shot at.
2. Significantly reduce violent crimes committed by black males.

Doesn't matter which one you choose, but those are the only choices.

 

Sounds like black people need to take a good sober look at their culture.

 

Not a single one of the pellet or BB guns I had as a kid in the 90s had an orange safety tip. I even had a CO2 pistol that looked like a .357 revolver unless you were close enough to it to see the plastic pellet holder in the area of the ammo chamber(I can't remember what the part is called that the bullets are in with a revolver). I bought it at Walmart with my dad. Had another spring loaded BB pistol that looked like a Luger which had no orange tip as well. All-in-all, I probably had about 6 or 7 BB/Pellet guns over the years, a mix of pistols and rifles.

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That will help too, because black people always check with all the other black people before doing something bad.

 

Black, white or green, you point something that looks like a gun at me at night and you are likely to get shot before you can say "April Fool."

The Black kids are told by 0 that it is reasonable for them to shoot cops so they start practicing when they are young. A cop appears and they take aim. at the officer as they at told to do by our president. Then his single mother cries that he could have been a space surgeon or a rapper..

 

Well, when I was a kid, we all had toy guns.

The thing is, 50 years ago, a toy gun looked like a toy gun. However, today's 'toy guns' hardly resembles a toy.









https://www.google.com/search?q=toy...MAhWLHR4KHaAWAaQQsAQIKw#imgrc=ek7YzwCi6ztIGM:

 

There was a guy at the annual southern Ohio swap meet selling some that were completely made of metal and looked like real firearms, I had to ask him about them before I realized they were airsoft guns. (I'm a firearms enthusiast, and these looked like the real deal excluding one particular detail, the diameter of the barrels.)

 

Baby momma thought the welfare little Tamir was earning for her was too low. So she sent him out to the park with the replica and had him swatted for some of that Freddy Gray lawsuit type of payoff. 100 intentional murder of her son. Ya kno cuz life ain't worf (*)(*)(*)(*) to thoz kind.

 

kids can play with toy guns, just make sure the toy guns look like toys and they are not dressed like adult gangsters, make sure they looks like kids playing

.

 

When I was a kid, we had real guns. Just .22 rifles and maybe pellet guns if your mom had a say in the matter. The cops would see us every now and then either hunting squirrels or just shooting at cans. We might get a "you kids be careful, now!" which was always followed up with "yes, sir. We always are".

and that was the end of that.

Of course, there wasn't a problem with kids shooting people back then.

 

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=454550

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WHICH IS FAKE?

 

Okay so like..Whose house do I have send a cap or bb gun to?
Playing with toy guns is part of a healthy child's childhood.
Then you you graduate to guns that actually shoot stuff :O
Then there's a set set of rules.
Every kid should be privileged to learn that.

 

Since Glock does not allow air soft copies of its guns, the Glock is the real gun.

 

This is a real glock.

 

As you say "there was a time" and that's it in a nutshell......

I don't think it's a case of the kid being black - it's any kid now of any color. If the parents are stupid enuf to buy their kid a toy gun and let him go outside w/it....they really need to have their heads examined if they can't understand it's how risky that is nowadays......

Crying 'But it was a TOY gun!' isn't going to bring your child back to life.

 

I was just referring to when I was perhaps 6 or 7. That's when little kids back then wanted to play cowboy with their cap guns.

 

Hey you know what? No
He is right
Furthermore "race" was about the last thing you considered when looking for friends.
I loved my..mini..single-shot cap gun.
I had friends of all kinda that i liked back in the day
Black..black peoplejust like white people..
Cuban..they alright
Boriqua..well. I never had no bori friends til I was 28
Asian...yeah i had quite a few asian friends..oo boy..

Most of my friends could play with toy guns when they were growing up.
I've had a .22 from age 11-on
and yes..I used to shoot moving rabbits....and eat them.

 

An officer may only use deadly force if a reasonable person would believe that they or someone they are charged with protecting was in immediate danger of grave physical harm.

The race of the person should be irrelevant.

 

Glock cant control what china does fyi.

 

http://www.blackfiregear.com/tokyo-marui-glock-17-gas-blowback-airsoft-pistol-3rd-generation

It appears that it doesn't matter what glock wants.

 

Color shouldn't matter. Playing with realistic looking toy guns in a public place is asking for trouble. I never bought my kids toy guns and they never left my property with airsoft guns. They all have real guns now.

My great niece is black. (1/2) While I doubt she will play with toy guns, I look forward to teaching her to shoot a .22 when she is old enough. Her momma likes shooting, so I guess I'll be getting in line to teach her.