by 
Anonymous
ANSWERS: 5
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The officer. Toy guns have colored tips and should be identified quickly as being a toy, also the officer seeing that it is a young child should drop to the ground or cover as most small children cannot aim at moving targets and may not have the strength in their fingers to pull the trigger, and can easily be avoided. He should scrutinize the situation if he is not sure what is happening. Most children will point the gun at another spot if asked to do so. Hey, can you hit that? and point to the roof.
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There was an incident here in Boston where the police were responding to an armed robbery. As one officer rounded a building close to the scene a 10 year older was standing there aiming a gun at him. The officer shot the child and killed him. Unfortunately the gun was simply a water pistol. There was so much outrage, the officer resigned due to the fact he was devastated, and the family tried to sue the City. It is very sad, but no one at any age can aim a gun at an officer. It is happening in schools all over the country, so everyone has to be careful and parents MUST explain all the consquences to children.
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You ought to consider the amount of time it takes for a person to pull a trigger. If somebody is pointing a gun at me, I don't have a lot of time to analyze the situation and think, "Hmmm...I wonder if they pried off the orange tip and that's a toy gun...how old does that person look?...the gun looks real enough, but maybe I should get closer and find out." If it's a small child and the context is harmless, that's a different story. But if the context is an unknown scenario, darkness, potential lethality, etc., anyone who points a gun at a cop is taking the risk of being shot. If the person shot ends up not having a gun, that's a tragedy--but at the moment if the officer thought his life was in danger, it's also justifiable homicide.
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I would say half the parents fault and half the officers. At the end of the day to shoot a child outright they must be 110 percent sure the child was armed with a real weapon with a view to kill. Surely there is some sort of training involving situations like this? As for the parents, if they insist on giving their kids toy guns to play with, then they should explain where when and how it is to be played with and if the child is not able to understand this they should take the toy away.
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Guns are too readily available in America, don't most households own at least one gun or something? I couldn't really blame a police officer in America for shooting what looked like an armed child, because there is every chance he could actually have a real gun. Elsewhere in the world though I would think differntly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've heard of banks in America giving away free guns to customers opening new accounts. If that's not asking for trouble then I don't know what is???
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