There are four families in Morgan Hill who ought to be
incredibly grateful their teenage sons aren
’t sporting toe tags. These four boys could have easily paid
with their lives for their breathtakingly poor judgment in choosing
to swarm a baseball practice Monday night while toting quite
realistic-looking replica guns and wearing masks.
There are four families in Morgan Hill who ought to be incredibly grateful their teenage sons aren’t sporting toe tags. These four boys could have easily paid with their lives for their breathtakingly poor judgment in choosing to swarm a baseball practice Monday night while toting quite realistic-looking replica guns and wearing masks.
With the Columbine High School massacre in Colorado and other school shooting incidents still fresh in our minds, panicked parents called the police when the boys were spotted.
“They were just a trigger pull away from being shot,” Police Lt. Joe Sampson said. “If they had made a false move or threatened anyone, then the officer is in a situation we never want to find ourselves in.”
Thanks to eagle-eyed MHPD Officer Rick Vestal, who noticed that one of the guns had a white plastic handle and notified his fellow officers, what could have been a deadly situation for teens and innocent bystanders ended peacefully.
Situations like this one point to the importance of laws requiring toy guns to have orange caps at the barrel tip, as in some states, or to be made in neon orange or green, as is the law in California. These laws are in place so that police can quickly tell the real thing from a play thing in life-or-death situations.
This is not a far-fetched scenario. In the last several years, at least three children and one adult in California have been killed by police who mistook a fake gun for a real firearm. On Monday, our community came very close to adding as many as four Morgan Hill teens to that sad total.
If that had happened, our small community would have been devastated, to say nothing of the impact on the officers involved.
“This can be career-ending for an officer,” Sampson said about an officer-involved shooting. “Emotionally, you never make it back.”
Despite the gravity of the situation, Morgan Hill police said some of the teens’ parents couldn’t understand why the police wouldn’t return their kids replica guns.
That’s a stunning, selfish and shortsighted reaction.
So let’s make this clear to all parents: Your child’s life, and the lives of those with the misfortune to be near him, are at risk if you allow him to play with realistic toy guns. Despite the California law, firearms that look disturbingly real are available. Don’t buy them, don’t allow your children to play with them.
Tossing those replica guns could very likely save a life.
