Alphecca

VERY interesting topic, Jeff.

My nickle, knee-jerk answer is HELL NO. Daisy should not be liable because some mutant chose to MISuse their product in the commission of a crime. Daisy should not be held liable because a mutant was too fucking stupid to drop the BB gun when a cop points a REAL gun at him.

Hmmm.

I was starting to argue that there was no reason for BB guns to look like real guns, when I remembered that a kid got shot holding a Lazer Tag gun (story: http://home.comcast.net/~Ferret1963/Lazer_Tag_Brand.HTML; picture of a Lazer Tag gun: http://www.progressiveboink.com/mike/img/toyguns/lazertag.jpg).

If that can be mistaken for a real gun, then so could pretty much any permutation of BB gun that they could come up with.

Bottom line: If you're brandishing a BB gun like a real weapon, drop the damn thing when someone points a real weapon at you...

Lastly, remember that holding up a bank with your finger in your pocket as a gun is called armed robbery. Should we sue Old Navy because their sweatshirts can conceal fingers???

Perhaps if more teenagers brandishing realistic toy pistols were shot to death by police officers, then teenagers would learn that BRANDISHING A REALISTIC TOY GUN IN FRONT OF A POLICE OFFICER IS STUPID.

What ever happened to personal responsibility?

I remember walking over a pedestrian bridge in Bangkok, and noticing that there was a high voltage power line that was tethered to the bridge pylon. You could easily reach out and grab the wire from the stairway, if you really wanted to do this. But in Thailand, it seems that reasonable people are not expected to do stupid things, so they didn't bother with any extraordinary measures to "protect" people from themselves.

I like that way of thinking.

Although a BB-gun is not a firearm, I would not put it in the same class as common toys. It is still a weapon that fires a projectile that can pierce the skin, potentially causing injury and in extreme circumstances, the possibility of death. (Imagine that BB piercing the eye-socket and lodging in the brain...).
The police officer made the right call in protecting himself, and there is no merit in the pending lawsuit.

In case you havent seen them Ive seen squirt guns that could be mistaked for real firearms at least at nite in a hallway by a police officer responding to call of a man with a gun its the kids fault no ones else period the only good think is that this stupid asshole didnt take someone with him.

I would say that it's stupid to point anything that looks like a real gun at a police officer and expect to live. It's not Daisy's fault for making a BB Gun look like a "real" gun. In fact, they're simply responding to market demand for them. And there is an argument that when used properly they make good training for youngsters before getting a real gun (some of the airguns have similar dimensions and weight to the real ones).

That having been said, they do require good parental supervision, as they are still dangerous. Further, as noted above, these can still be considered deadly weapons. There was a recent case in Dallas of a five-year-old accidentally killing a four-year-old cousin when he got his hands on a pellet gun that had been left behind a washing machine.

I forget exactly where, but there's some stuff in the federal code that specifically defines BB guns as NOT firearms.

Meanwhile, back in the dark & fascist state of NJ, BB guns ARE specifically designed as firearms.

Yup, you need a FID and a Pistol Purchase Permit to get a BB pistol in NJ.

As geek points out, in NJ air and co2 powered guns are considered firearms. You need the same permits to buy then as for powder burning arms. NO mailorder. The only that requires this, so far as I know.

So to go back to the original post, would they be covered under that federal law in NJ? Can a state define something within it own borders in a way to place it under a federal law? I suspect not, but...

As far as BB and pellet guns go, they are real weapons, just of a smaller caliber than most powder burners. If you look at the velocities some of them reach, you will see they can do some real damage in the right circumstances.

If I recall, there were many air powered guns used in early battles starting in the 16th century. These guns were feared precisely because they could be more powerful and accurate than black powder, as well as less visible due to lack of smoke and quiet enough that tracing them could be almost impossible. An early snipers/assasins weapon. I could be wrong on the time-line, but I did read it somewhere in a book on gun history.

No, Daisy and other companies should not be held liable for marketing a product based on the merits of its "looks." I would argue that they are not "toys" per se, as they can't be purchased by people who don't meet a minimum age requirement. GIJoe doesn't have an age requirement - it's a toy. I wouldn't think it would be considered a weapon either - easier and more efficient to dump those copperhead BB's in a sock and hit someone over the head with them.

There are many crimes committed with "weapons" that would not discharge a projectile at all, such as prop guns or toy guns, pop guns, model guns, etc. The only thing dangerous is the intimidation factor they have when placed in the wrong hands. And people who get killed by police for brandishing a toy gun? Darwin Award.

I just posted an article this morning that finds the police justified in shooting a person who brandished a prop gun on a traffic stop. This lawsuit is just as groundless and frivolous. What next - make police wait to get fired on before allowing them to defend themselves?

When the toy gun manufacturers began making their products Day-Glo orange and green and yellow I really expected that criminals would paint their real guns, in order to benefit from the inevitable hesitation on the part of law enforcement. So far as I know that has not happened.

I can't seriously argue for classifying a BB gun as a firearm, but neither can I argue in favor of unrestricted sales and use. Of course a lot of kids learn proper firearm handling from being introduced to BB guns, but the possibility for injury from careless or malicious handling is very real. So I come down firmly on the "gee, I dunno" side.

I have a Russian made BB gun from EAA, the Drozd which is CO2 operated and fully automatic. You can even set the cyclic rate from 300 to 450 to 600 rpm. Coolest BB gun ever, bar none. It was a bright yellow, though, which suited me fine. I prefer my toys to not look like lethal force.

In Japan, where nobody gets to own a handgun, replica Airsoft guns are very popular, and many of them are precise duplicates of actual firearms. Seeing those always makes me nervous - I don't want to carry anything that looks like a firearm but isn't.

1. A BB gun is not a firearm
2. The manufacturer has no liability or responsibility for how it is used,
3. Would you hold Proctor & Gamble responsible because someone fashioned a gun shape out of a bar of soap?

Let's get real, folks.

The most effective step that could be taken to eliminate this kind of nonsense is to institute "loser-pays" for lawsuits, and make the attorney jointly and severally liable with the plaintiff IF the attorney has a contingent fee arrangement in place. If the attorney is going to profit on the upside, then he has to share the risk on the downside.

Virtually none of these bullshit cases (that's a legal term) would be filed if the plaintiffs had a risk of having to pay the other side's lawyers plus court costs if they lost the case. As it works today, though, the plaintiffs have nothing to lose (except some time and perhaps some anxiety from having to testify) and the lawyers finance the cases knowing their maximum exposure is their out of pocket costs.

Unfortunately, plaintiff lawyers are at or near the top of the political contributor lists, and own a lot of legislators in every state. So the likelihood of this happening anytime soon is remote.

On a related note, I was delighted to see that the Florida law that passed last summer, extending the Castle Doctrine outside the home, for a while contained a provision that imposed court costs and attorney fees on plaintiffs and their lawyers who brought suit against someone who lawfully defended themselves within the definitions of that law. It also imposed those fees on law enforcement agencies and prosecutors who prosecuted people who properly defended themselves. Unfortunately, most of those provisions didn't survive the legislative process, but it was a nice start.

Eleven comments and no one has pointed out that the bottom picture isn’t a S&W?

It’s a Sig people! Come on, are you guys really gun nuts or not? We're supposed to be nitpicky about this kind of stuff. Kinda like clip vs magazine.

Actually Cutter, S&W does make a series of guns that look almost identical to Sigs, look up the 410/910 series.

Ummm, maybe the meant it like .40 SW, but since caliber is stuck in there, it makes it look like they are saying it's an S&W firearm.

Well, I was kind of joking about the pic (just pointing out how gun folks tend to be a bit obsessive about terminology). But since we're on the subject...

Yes, the 410 is similar looking, but the gun in the pic is definitely a Sig (the lack of a beavertail is a sure giveaway that it's not a S&W).

If they meant that it was chambered in .40S&W, then they should have said ".40 Smith & Wesson Caliber Semi-Automatic Pistol" instead of ".40 Caliber Smith & Wesson Semi-Automatic Pistol".

In New Jersey, a BB Gun is a firearm. I know, I was arrested when I was 18 for having a BB gun without possessing a Firearms Owners ID card. Luckily, my parents knew the Chief of Police and they let me off with just a warning, though it took awhile for my dad to get the Crossman Pump back.

Looking over the Hunters Safety Manual for Virginia the other night I noticed a section on air guns in which they said they weren't firearms but were guns and were effectivly the same as a firearm and deserved the respect and care of any other gun.

The top pic is a Colt Commander replica and the bottom is a SIG

Point anything looking like a gun at a cop and you're gonna get shot.

Would they have sued if he had one of those lighters that look like a gun?

The whole point of BB Guns is to learn, in a relatively safe way, the responsibility that comes with possession of a device with which "you could shoot your eye out!"