MINNEAPOLIS – Popular new pellet guns that look remarkably like lethal weapons have been linked to the death of at least one teenager in Florida and scares at schools around the country in recent months.
The guns are used to play a military-style game called airsoft, which is similar to paintball but cheaper and less messy because the weapons fire plastic pellets instead of paint capsules that burst on impact.
Airsoft guns are prized for their realistic design. Some resemble Glock, Smith &Wesson, Magnum and Beretta handguns and Kalashnikov assault rifles.
Toy guns – airsoft guns included – are required under federal law to have a bright orange tip to distinguish them from real weapons. But some people remove or blacken the tips.
That was the case January in Seminole County, Fla., where 15-year-old Christopher Penley was shot to death by a SWAT officer while brandishing an airsoft pistol at a school. The muzzle of the 9mm-lookalike was painted black.
“The replicas really don’t give our police officers time to think about ‘Is this, or is this not, an airsoft weapon?’” said Tom Walsh, a spokesman for police in St. Paul, where a politician wants to toughen an ordinance to cover airsoft guns.
Minnesota law already makes it a crime to have a fake gun on school property. St. Paul City Councilman Lee Helgen is calling for ordinance that would bar the carrying of replica guns in public.
Some other local governments are moving in the same direction.
After a 14-year-old boy with a BB gun was shot and wounded by police in Chicago over the summer, the City Council banned BB and pellet guns. And officials in Beaverton, Ore., are considering a ban on airsoft guns.
This fall alone:
* A 16-year-old Millwood, Wash., boy was arrested on suspicion of shooting two students with an airsoft pistol on their way to soccer practice.
* Two high schools in Apple Valley, Minn., were locked down after a 14-year-old used a fake gun to shoot plastic pellets at other students. Two other students in the district also brought fake guns to school recently.
* In Melbourne, Fla., a 12-year-old boy was charged with aggravated battery for firing plastic pellets at elementary school students at a bus stop.
* Two high school students in Hurricane, W.Va., were suspended for having a plastic-pellet gun on campus.
Airsoft guns originated in Japan in the early 1980s and began appearing in North America in the 1990s. Some of the guns are powered by springs; others use gas canisters or batteries. Lower-end airsoft pistols can be bought online for less than $10. The pellets can cause welts on the skin, and players wear goggles and sometimes mouth guards.
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