Think a cop in fear for his life should be able to tell "toy" from "real"?
OK, I come out of the shadows, hold one of these guns up to your head, tell you to kiss your ass good-bye, and pull the trigger. Do you want me to be holding gun 1 or gun 2? If you had the power to use deadly force to stop me from pulling the trigger, would you? Regardless of which gun I was holding?
I don't think it should matter. I think that if you hold a realistic looking gun (toy or not) to someone's melon, you should be killed immediately on general principles.
I'll be real generous here and state that your genetic donors don't need to be killed too, but they should be smacked rather vigorously across the gourd.
Posted by: Eichra Oren on January 3, 2003 06:32 PMThis is the point exactly, how could anyone tell in the seconds of a confrontation wether it's a real gun? Hell, who would even wonder? Boards of inquiry regularly clear cops in this kind of shooting for good reason, you can't tell the difference.
Sometimes you can do everything right, and still someone gets killed. You can cry, rage, or bay at the moon, it still happens.
Posted by: puggs on January 5, 2003 03:39 AM