New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has announced a settlement with online retailers over the sale of realistic-looking toy guns.
According to a statement, online retailers will be “required to sell only toys that are colored entirely white, bright red, bright orange, bright yellow, bright green, bright blue, bright pink or bright purple or a combination of these colors.”
Those same retailers have also been fined.
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Via the Times Union:
State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office has reached settlements with 30 online retailers nationwide that sold illegal toy guns to New York consumers.
Details of those settlements and what companies the agreements were made with were not immediately made available.
In August, Schneiderman forced retail giants such as Walmart and Amazon to pay over $300,000 in fines for the crime of selling toy guns.
That agreement came after the Attorney General sent cease-and-desist letters to the retailers last December.
In the press release announcing the settlement, Schneiderman alleged that four deaths have occurred in New York State since 1997 due to toy guns being mistaken for the real thing.
One of the toy gun sellers, ToyArsenal.com, has added the following disclaimer to their site.
Toy guns have been targeted more frequently in recent years.
In California, one activist began pushing a toy gun buyback program, exchanging teddy bears for the plastic ‘weapons.’
During last school year, an upstate New York school averted a ‘very serious gun threat‘ when administrators swiftly dealt with an 8-year-old boy who had told a classmate that he was going to shoot them … with a Lego gun … no bigger than a quarter. The school’s social worker and principal were called into action, disarming the boy and punishing him with a lunch-time detention which then led to a one-day suspension.
Whether or not toy gun laws are effective is a matter of much debate. Any child wishing to have a realistic looking gun could tape or paint over the markings. If that were the case, would that child now be charged with a crime for violating New York’s toy gun laws? Would the retailer still be held accountable and forced to pay civil penalties?
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
