Store Owner Sued Over Replica Guns : Tarzana: The look-alike models can be legally sold only for specific purposes. Authorities say use appears to be widespread among students.

The sleek, semiautomatic Beretta fell out of the Tarzana teen-ager’s overnight bag, right in front of his mother.

While the concerned parents interrogated the 15-year-old about the pistol, he led them to his little brother’s closet. There they found another one--a Walther PPK. They called the cops.

The boys’ “guns” actually were replicas--with working slides, magazines and firing pins. Replicas sound a lot like guns when they fire blanks, and can seriously injure users if real bullets are used, because the replicas might explode, authorities say.

After an undercover sting operation, Los Angeles police found what they said was the source of the replicas--a Tarzana sporting goods and camping store owner they say had sold them to an 18-year-old, who in turn had bought them for the junior high school student.

On Thursday, the Los Angeles city attorney’s office filed a civil lawsuit against Garo Kalaydjian, owner of the Recon-1 store at 18720 Ventura Blvd. Kalaydjian was charged with two misdemeanor violations of a state law that prohibits selling an imitation firearm.

According to the law, it is legal to sell replicas only to people authorized to use them in motion picture, TV and stage productions, in athletic events, military or civil defense activities and public displays authorized by public or private schools.

The use of replicas, authorities said, appears to be widespread among students. They are “realistic enough to get a person carrying them killed if they brandished them at someone with a real weapon,” City Atty. James K. Hahn said.

“It’s a big problem,” said Edmund Fimbres, a deputy city attorney in the Special Enforcement Unit. “It’s especially a problem with minors, who aren’t allowed to buy handguns. But they seem to be able to get a hold of these quite easily.”

The Los Angeles school board voted to expel 21 students earlier this month for bringing weapons to school. Eight of the cases involved replicas.

And the 15-year-old who dropped the replica handgun out of his backpack told his parents he spent $340 to buy the Beretta and the smaller Walther for his 14-year-old brother, according to police reports. He told police that “many of the kids at school had brought replicas” to class, although he did not know where they had bought them.

In an interview, Kalaydjian said he had made an honest mistake, and that he hasn’t sold any replicas since an undercover police officer came in and bought one Feb. 25.

“If we knew to begin with we couldn’t sell them to the public, we wouldn’t have gotten them,” Kalaydjian, 27, said. “We just didn’t know.”

On Thursday, several of the replicas were still being offered for sale in a glass case in the front of the store, next to the BB guns.

The undercover officer paid $140.67 for a Walther pistol and blank ammunition, according to police reports, after an employee named Eric told her the replica was an ideal weapon for self-protection because the blanks made a loud noise “just like a real gun” and would frighten away assailants or intruders.

“I asked Eric if you needed a permit to have one and he said, ‘No,’ ” the undercover officer wrote in a police report. “I said, ‘You mean anybody can buy one of these?’ Eric stated, ‘Yeah.’ ”

Kalaydjian faces a maximum of $20,000 in civil fines and court costs if convicted.