I thought the guy showed a good attitude to the whole affair, the cops too, come to that. As the speaker cop said, it needs to be taken seriously until proved otherwise. We have had an influx of the replica plastic pistols firing the 6mm plastic beads, and yes, there have been a fair number of losers waving them in public, pulling stick ups with them etc. Our AOS (armed offender squad) treats all these as real until proved otherwise, rightly so. Just me personally I'd like them to either be banned outright or at least painted orange or something. New Zealand is not a hand gun culture and I'd like to keep it that way. Far as I can see they serve no worthwhile purpose other than to minimize the care that needs to be taken and the harm that can result from casual handling and pointing of fire arms. A couple of years back my then g/f had a 12 year old son. A good kid, was very interested as kids are in my air rifle and .22. While in a gun shop getting more ammo he pointed at a display of soft air pistols and informed me he would really love one for his birthday coming up. My line was if he wanted to pay for it, I'd get it for him, otherwise out of luck. So we had a conversation about it on the way home with end result of me picking up a good used BSA Meteor .177 rifle for his birthday instead. The rifle lived in my gun locker and he and I went magpie shooting on the weekends. I was well pleased the day he shot his 1st magpie from 50 or so feet up a tree. he stalked with discretion, pumped up his rifle once he saw the bird, raised the rifle nearly vertical and SNAP, shot the black and white bandit right through center mass. The cherry came for me as we were walking back, he with his air rifle in one hand and a dead magpie by it's feet in the other. "You know, this is much more interesting than one of those toy pistols." Amen.
