Man Shot by LAPD Found to Have Airsoft Gun

Have you ever had a gun pointed at you, even for a second?

Unfortunately, I have, though it was just being waved around a bit. Still, something that happens is that the barrel diameter looks, in that moment, to be something sufficient to take down a T-rex, even if it’s just a little .22 mouse gun.

If it’s pointed at you or someone else with some appearance of aggression, you’re definitely not going to take the time to break out the calipers and measure that bore diameter to see what caliber it is.

This is something to remember when you play stupid games and end up winning stupid prizes, as one guy in Los Angeles apparently did.

A man shot and killed by Los Angeles police Monday morning in Boyle Heights was armed with an Airsoft gun, not a rifle, authorities said.

Around 8:30 a.m. Monday, LAPD Hollenbeck Division officers responded to a report of a man armed with a rifle near the corner of 8th and Spence streets, according to a department statement.

When officers arrived, they encountered a man barricaded inside a van and police shot him, police said.

Police later confirmed the man was not carrying a rifle but was “armed with an Airsoft MP5, able to shoot metallic projectiles with the orange tip removed.”

Now, the incident is under review, including authorities looking at the officer’s body cam footage. It’s entirely possible that the shoot could be ruled unjustified.

Yet if that’s the case, it won’t be because the gun was an airsoft gun.

See, as noted, there was no orange tip, for one thing. Those are legally mandated to be placed there by the manufacturer so police will know it’s not a real gun. However, there’s no law requiring them to stay there, so far as I’m aware. Even if there is, plenty of people will still remove it, especially if they want to sell the gun as a real one.

Should the man in question have pointed the gun at officers, the officer who shot and killed him would have seen it as having no other choice. He had no reason to give a potential gunman the benefit of the doubt.

In that split second, you don’t know it’s not real. You just see a gun and have to react.

The thing is, a lot of people use airsoft guns without the orange tip, not for recreational pursuits, such as those they’re intended for, but to take the place of a real firearm. Criminals sometimes think that they’ll get a lesser sentence for an armed robbery carried out with a fake gun compared to a real one, but they don’t consider that neither the police nor an armed citizen is going to take the time to ask if it’s a real gun before they light up someone pointing one at someone else.

If you play around with an airsoft and act like it’s a real gun in public, don’t be surprised with the police roll up and treat you like you have a real one. That includes putting rounds in you because he pointed it at someone else.

We don’t know if that’s what this guy did, but others have and got similarly ventilated because of it.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

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