The Kelowna RCMP is urging people to treat imitation guns the same way they’d treat a real firearm.
The warning comes as the police report seeing an increasing number of the imitation guns, including bb guns and airsoft guns, during the course of their investigations.
“Some of them have been search warrants, we’ve found some in vehicle stops, and there have been occasions where we have just gotten calls from the public seeing someone walking down the road with what appears to be a gun in their hand,” Cpl Jocelyn Noseworthy said.
For RCMP it’s a concerning trend, because when an imitation weapon is mistaken for the real thing, the consequences can be deadly.
“Unfortunately, we’ve seen it both here and in the United States before, cases where people have had an imitation firearm and have ended up being killed by the police when they’ve arrived,” Noseworthy said.
“Unfortunately, in all these situations we have to assume that (the) gun is real until it can be definitively proven that it isn’t.”
Police tell owners their best bet is not to have imitation firearms visible in public and suggest that retailers make sure that buyers are aware that imitation guns can easily be confused for the real thing.