PD Editorial: Everyone is safer if toys look like toys

The death of Andy Lopez divided the community, as has District Attorney Jill Ravitch’s decision that Deputy Erick Gelhaus didn’t violate the law when he shot the Santa Rosa teenager.

If there’s anything approaching consensus in this sad situation, it involves the airsoft BB gun Andy was carrying on Oct. 22.

We’ve heard from dozens of people who say Andy shouldn’t have been walking down Moorland Avenue with a toy that could be mistaken for an AK-47 assault rifle. We’ve heard from dozens more who believe no toy should so closely resemble a deadly firearm.

Federal law requires BB and pellet guns to have an orange tip. But the tip was missing from the gun Andy was carrying; it broke off when he dropped it, according to the district attorney’s report. And, the report said, several witnesses, including responding officers and firefighters, thought it was a real assault rifle.

A measure pending in Sacramento would tighten the rules in California - requiring guns like Andy’s be brightly colored or have translucent bodies. That’s already mandatory for most toy firearms, but those that actually fire BBs or other small projectiles are exempted.

Andy Lopez isn’t the first youngster to suffer the consequences of that exemption.

Four years ago in Los Angeles, police officers came upon a group of boys playing with airsoft guns as the sun was setting. One of the officer thought the guns were real and fired. A 13-year-old boy was paralyzed. Two years ago, a 15-year-old with an airsoft gun was shot by police in a Texas school. At a Halloween party in Hollywood in 2000, an actor carrying a replica gun was shot by police. A 1990 Justice Department study found more than 200 incidents per year in which imitation firearms are mistaken for real guns. Fortunately, most of them don’t end in tragedy.

A jury returned a $24 million civil judgment against the LAPD in the case of the paralyzed boy, and Andy’s family has filed a wrongful death suit against Sonoma County.

Afterward, Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck started pressing lawmakers to act on lookalike toy guns. He found an ally in state Sen. Kevin De Leon, a Los Angeles Democrat, who introduced a bill to close the loophole that allows airsoft guns to look too much like the real thing.

The Senate was willing, but, De Leon told The Press Democrat editorial board, “we ran out of luck when we got to the Assembly side.” The bill stalled, with manufacturers, retailers and Second Amendment groups in opposition.

De Leon brought the bill back after Andy’s death. His primary co-sponsor is state Sen. Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, who expressed optimism about the bill when they met with the editorial board in the weeks after the shooting. “When people say no to something, and it happens again, they’re willing to take a second look,” she said.

The bill, SB 199, cleared the Senate on a 23-8 vote in January, and it was approved by the Assembly Public Safety Committee on a 5-2 vote last month. It’s now awaiting a hearing in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

There’s still opposition, including arguments that real guns are available in a rainbow of colors, so there’s no point in requiring bright colors for toys. In the past, the argument tended to be that bright colors would “kill the market” because many kids want their toys to resemble real firearms. Sounds like, ahem, a shotgun approach to fighting this bill.

But De Leon’s bill isn’t about guns. It’s about toys. It won’t prevent every tragedy, but over time, realistic-looking toy firearms will be discarded, and new ones won’t be mistaken for the real thing. When that happens, officers won’t have to make snap judgments with potentially deadly consequences, for themselves and the public. And everyone will be better off.