Teens arrested for playing cowboys & indians err Native Americans
In Hendersonville:
Several teenagers were cited for firing air soft pellet guns in Hendersonville, because of the town’s tough stand on toy guns.
The teens claimed they never knew they were breaking the law when they gathered in a vacant school yard Sunday afternoon to shoot air soft guns at each other.
Several officers raced to the scene and cited the eight teenagers who had the store-bought toy guns.
Apparently, toy guns are illegal in Hendersonville. And no one knew that. Like everyone else, the kids assumed Hendersonville wasn’t run by idiots who decided to make kids’ toys illegal.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:06 am
Even snowballs? good gawd!
We need a new essay: The Pussification of Middle Tennessee.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:35 am
Kids playing with toy guns? How un-American. I’m horrified. Reminded me to pick up a brick of .22’s for my 4 yr old grandkid’s rifle before she runs out. Jack.
March 21st, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Oh, and shouldn’t that be “cowpersons”?
March 21st, 2007 at 12:06 pm
This demonstrates how out of touch officialdom either becomes or already is when they are elected. People need to remember that they VOTED FOR THOSE who do this stuff and that they are their EMPLOYEES. Tell them to rescind or change the law.
March 21st, 2007 at 12:46 pm
Here (Missoula, MT) it’s illegal to fire airsoft guns in the city limits. But the police only enforce it when someone is shooting out windows or otherwise vandalizing stuff, or shooting at people/animals. Which is a good thing, because I shoot mine in my basement. 🙂
March 21st, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I sure feel safer now.
March 21st, 2007 at 2:32 pm
Officers, plural, raced to the scene?
Sounds like they have too many cops, I guess.
Kit: You can shoot out a window with an AirSoft? What do they make the windows out of out there, tissue paper?
March 21st, 2007 at 3:30 pm
Never overestimate the intelligence or good sense of an elected official. Most are only good at being popular. When someone can be popular enough to win an election by majority, odds are he/she is lying to somebody or somebody is just as damn dumb or dumber than the candidate.
March 21st, 2007 at 5:11 pm
Its part of a national movement aimed at making guns, even toys, taboo in our culture. Hopefully it will backfire as more and more people realize the pathological insanity of it.
When I was a kid, we carried BB guns (real ones—not the wimpy plastic pellet jobs of today) and .22 rifles (actual firearms) around town openly and no one said a word about it. After years of this, my brothers and I were approached by the local “town clown” (i.e. sheriff’s deputy) while carrying two .22 rifles across town toward the woods where we went shooting. The oldest among us couldn’t have been more than 13 years old.
He wanted to make sure the rifles were unloaded as we carried them though town, which of course they were. End of conversation. We considered even that as a willful violation of our privacy. This would have been around 1969ish in Eastern Washington state.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:04 pm
With a typical plastic 0.12 g pellets and an a Kmart-friendly 1 Kj spring? That’ll bounce off any glass freezing rain can’t penetrate. A more serious rig might run plastic pellets at 0.25 g pellets, and some of the springs you can find on the aftermarket can get some real power moving. You’d have to modify or order these from overseas since American manufactors can’t seem to get decent pellets to the market and only gun and target stores will offer AirSoft that get close to 2.1 Kj of power, but it’d be enough to leave nice, round, 6mm holes in glass, saying you fired from very close range.
Pathetic that society is so fearful of this sorta stuff these days. I can’t say the kids were being brilliant, but to ban the discharge [i]anywhere[/i] in the town?
Kids were lucky they didn’t get in worse trouble : all airsoft guns are supposed to have a >6mm orange tip at time of sale under federal law, and while I think TN lets you shave that crap off, many officers don’t know that.
March 21st, 2007 at 10:29 pm
This is retarded – I grew up in Hendersonville, for the most part, and never ran into this sort of nonsense with MY toy guns.
ColtCCO
March 24th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
I work in H’ville. Yep, it bites, but the money’s good.
Of course, being sensible, I live in Robertson county.