GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE, OR DO THEY?

[HairOfTheDog]

One problem HotD is that age is hard to tell anymore. Toy or real is even harder to tell. Then throw in a dash of the violence we see in the youth of today and a pinch of piss poor parenting and it all mixes up into a big pot of disaster.
I cant say I would hesitate to draw and fire if any person younger person or not, should pull one of those replicas out on me. I wont be standing there looking at the "weapon" trying to tell if it is real or not. Looking at the person and trying to figure out their age. Or trying to figure out what is going through their heads, what kind of person they really are, or what kind of day they are having. If someone pulls something on me that looks like the 'weapons' in my pics I will be the one going home to my family. In the heat of the moment things happen real fast.

Yeah, that's why I'd rather my teenaged nephews, both of whom are near 6 feet and almost always wear ear phones when they're walking somewhere, not carry any realistic-looking toy guns. They don't have to "pull" on somebody for somebody to presume them to be a threat.

According to witnesses, the deputies called out once for Lopez to drop the gun. The boy started to turn around and was shot at 8 times; 7 of those bullets hitting Lopez. Santa Rose PD statements are consistent with those accounts. It doesn't appear that Lopez drew the toy gun on the cops or anything, he just turned in their direction, at which point the deputy says he feared for his life.

Lopez is described as a good kid and promising student by his teachers and those who knew him. FBI is investigating the incident. Authorities are promising a transparent investigation in response to all of the protestors.

Lopez was killed because he was carrying a toy while walking down the street; there were no other suspicious elements about him or his activity. Impossible to know if he heard the deputies clearly the one time they called out before the senior deputy fired at him 8 times and shot him to death on the street.

I don't know if the cop who shot him did anything wrong; could just be a tragic convergence. Will see where the investigation leads.

The Santa Rosa PD released this evidence photo of the toy rifle that Lopez was carrying.