Toy Guns

“Bid to Ban Toy Replica Guns Is Shot Down” (Part I, May 27) is about sidetracking a bill to outlaw toy guns in California. The goal of the bill is laudable: to prevent children from brandishing toy guns and being shot by the police. But to prevent unnecessary deaths due to firearms, perhaps real guns should be banned instead. That way when a child has a gun the police will know it is a toy.

Such a law would save not only the few children who would otherwise be killed by police, but the hundreds of innocent people killed by guns every year. A toy gun never killed anyone. Why not ban the kind that kills?

MATTHEW HINERFELD

Santa Monica