Guns: Looks can kill?

James has a good post detailing the not-so-recent handwringing the Brits are experiencing over replica guns (essentially pieces of metal that are shaped like guns). I thought I'd post about my own experiences with such things.

I remember getting a Red Ryder BB gun as a gift. The person who gave it to me knew I was a huge fan of "A Christmas Story":



That's all well and good, but living in Gainesville, the only convenient place I had available to try it out was a big wooded lot behind my old apartment complex. I grabbed the BB gun (complete with huge orange cap on the barrel and plasticky appearance) and walked the 100 yards to the wooded lot, thinking no one would care about a fake-looking gun.

That was a mistake. About ten minutes later, as I was merrily pinging a few tree branches with BBs, a police car rolled by and the police officer inside shouted that I should "drop the weapon." Naturally it was all a humorous misunderstanding and the cop eventually even offered to drive me home (a nice gesture), but the fact remained that some busybody in an apartment was so worried about a BB gun that they called the cops. Generally, when I go out in public, I don't expect to have uniformed officers ready to draw a G27 on me, so I think I'll stick to shooting real guns in a range. :-P