Councilman Makes Another Push To Ban Realistic Looking Fake Guns

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Councilman Makes Another Push To Ban Realistic Looking Fake Guns
07/06/2004 05:07 PM
By: NY1 News

A City Councilman wants to ban the sale of toy guns.

Queens Councilman David Weprin re-introduced legislation Tuesday that would make it illegal to sell realistic looking toy guns in the city.

Weprin held a press conference just one day after a wheelchair-bound boy was struck by a police officer's bullet in Brooklyn. The officers who shot the boy were chasing a teenager who allegedly used a toy gun to rob a shoe store.

Current city law requires all toy guns to be brightly colored, but Weprin says they can easily be painted to look more realistic. During the press conference, the councilman displayed three multi-colored water pistols that he said could easily pass for real guns if they were spray painted black.

"These are three little water pistols...under the law, they're allowed because they're multi-colored, but if you spray paint it with ordinary spray paint, which is very common, it looks very much like a real gun," said Weprin.

The law would still allow for the sale of non-lookalike guns, such as Super Soaker water guns, that could not be mistaken for real guns.