I've posted a few comments in the diary that is currently up on the Rec list about the person who was shot by cops in the WalMart with a toy gun, here:
http://www.dailykos.com/...
including a few photos to better illustrate for people what is involved here. Alas, my comments soon got buried in a big long avalanche of threads. So I'm putting my comments and photos in a diary to make it more visible. I hope it gives some illustration and understanding to people who are not familiar with Airsofts.
There are actually two kinds of gun replicas sold in WalMart. The Airsoft shoot little plastic BBs and are pretty much harmless. The pellet guns shoot little metal projectiles (.177 caliber, a bit smaller than a .22). They are not "toys", unlike the Airsofts. The pellet guns are not enormously dangerous to people. They are used mostly for target shooting, but they are also sometimes used to kill birds and other small animals (some people use them for shooting pigeons, rats, or other pests) in places where firearms are not allowed.
These gun replicas are not the same thing. Pellet guns are not generally made to look like real weapons because they are not intended as toys--they are actual weapons, and are made to be functional. They may or may not have the dayglo orange safety tip (most don't).
Airsoft guns, by contrast, are intended only as gaming toys. There is an entire organized team sport called "Airsoft"--it is the modern-day equivalent of "playing Army" or "paintball", in which two teams of players on an indoor or outdoor course dress themselves in protective masks and clothing, and shoot at each other with small soft plastic BBs. Not only are there Airsoft-firing rifles, shotguns and pistols, but also things like BB-firing machine guns, claymore mines, and hand grenades--patterned after historical firearms ranging from World War One to today. It's a pretty big market. (It is also why Airsofts are found in the Sporting Goods section and not in the Toys section.)
I have a number of Airsoft myself--I use them as prop guns for the YouTube movies I make. I usually disassemble them and rearrange the parts and add pieces to make sci-fi-looking laser rifles from them, but I do have a few "normal" ones which look like real military guns. I also remove the orange tips to make them look more real for filming, which makes it technically illegal for me to take them out in public, but not illegal to have for filming. I would not ever take one out in public anyway--they are quite realistic-looking, and I'd be very likely to get shot. Most of them have working bolts and removable magazines (which makes them very nice for realistic filming with some CGI muzzle fire). While someone who was familiar with firearms may be able to tell them apart with a good look, virtually no ordinary person would, especially at any sort of distance.
Some photos of some of my own Airsofts will illustrate what I mean:
Airsoft pistols and rifles. They would normally have the dayglo orange tips, but I have removed them.
Airsoft pistols and rifles with magazines removed. As you can see, they are very realistic-looking.
To further illustrate the realism, one of these is a REAL .380-caliber Walther PPK pistol, and one is its Airsoft copy. Could you tell the difference in half a second . . . ?
If the poor kid in the WalMart did indeed pull the mag out and then reinsert it, it is enormously likely that someone would think he was loading a real mag into a real gun.
I am not making excuses for the cops here--but I can sadly see how all this may have gone down. Though I suspect that if the kid had been an open-carry nut (and white), he'd likely still be alive.
I hope this illustration can help give a better understanding for people who may not be familiar with Airsofts.
7:27 PM PT: UPDATE: Information now indicates that it was a pellet-gun version of the Crossman M-177, which is modeled after the Magpul Masada assault rifle.
11:17 PM PT: UPDATE: Links to the exact model in question indicate that it was one of the models that did NOT have a detachable mag. So although it still looked like a real gun, he would not have been able to appear to have been loading it by reinserting the mag. Witnesses who reportedly described him as "loading the gun" were mistaken--he could not have been doing so.