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Line Blurs Between Play, Gunplay Donna St. George An alarm went off one night at Potowmack Elementary School in Sterling, and a surveillance camera recorded the scene: five intruders in masks and hoods darting through hallways and corridors, their assault rifles pointed. In minutes, sheriff's deputies arrived, their own guns loaded and drawn. Only after the gunmen were taken into custody did deputies discover that the assault rifles were replicas -- so-called "airsoft" guns that shoot lightweight plastic BBs -- and the intruders were 14-year-old boys. But during that tense confrontation June 2, 2006, fantasy and reality collided, the line blurred between teenagers who were pretending and deputies who were not. No one was hurt in the Loudoun County school break-in, but that has not been the case everywhere. In the past several years in Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Arkansas, young people with imitation guns have been killed by police who assumed they were armed with the real thing.
(Article continues below) "It sends a chill up your spine to think of what could have happened," said Kraig Troxell, a spokesman for the Loudoun sheriff's office, which sent eight deputies to the elementary school that June night. These cases and others have come amid a quiet uptick in the popularity of airsoft guns. Police have seen more of them. Schools have noted their arrival. Last holiday season, they ranked among the most-searched-for items online in the toys and hobbies category, along with Barbie, Build-a-Bear and Legos, according to the Hitwise Index chart. The issue of shootings prompted by imitation guns is not new, and Congress and some jurisdictions passed laws more than a decade ago to address such concerns. But with the popularity of airsoft guns and other realistic pellet and BB guns, the issue has taken a new turn and is again causing alarm.
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