ALBANY -- The call came from a concerned neighbor just before 5 p.m. on a Saturday last month -- the kind of call that triggers a swift and forceful police response.
Two young men were spotted on Clinton Avenue in West Hill -- the epicenter of gun violence in the city -- and one of them appeared to be stashing a black handgun in his jacket.
The young man was actually an 11-year-old kid.
The pistol? A black metal Daisy BB pistol that, police fear, even a discerning officer would be hard-pressed to distinguish from a deadly semiautomatic handgun.
Had the encounter gone differently, the boy might have ended up like a 15-year-old Texas teen shot dead by police in his middle school in January after he took a pellet gun to class.
It almost ended that way on Feb. 10 for Richard Carter, 22, whom city police shot and wounded after he allegedly pointed a black pellet gun resembling a semiautomatic pistol at officers behind a Brevator Street apartment building.
"Until they actually picked that gun up and examined it, I still didn't know if it was real or not," said Police Chief Steven Krokoff, who arrived at the scene soon after the incident.
Even before Carter's shooting, police were growing increasingly frustrated by their encounters with the realistic-looking weapons that many people consider toys.
In the early hours of Jan. 7, two officers drew their handguns on a 38-year-old Voorheesville man stopped in his SUV in West Hill at First Street and Lexington Avenue who had an imitation Sig Sauer SP2022 pistol.
The tense encounter, though it did not involve a BB or pellet gun, was captured on a police cruiser's in-car camera and ended only after the man tossed the fake weapon out the driver's-side window at gunpoint.
And, according to Krokoff, that's only half the problem.
A spate of shootings involving pellet or BB guns -- including that of a postal worker on Madison Avenue and a North Albany man who was partially blinded, allegedly by two marauding teens -- has city police exasperated and searching for answers.
"It's always been an issue. Their existence in and of themselves is not a problem. It's when they're utilized in an unsafe or unlawful manner," Krokoff said of the weapons, which are most often powered by forced air and fire small-diameter ammunition at velocities that can pierce the skin.
BBs are round and tend to be less accurate than pellets, which often have a shaped tip and travel faster.
"They become a dangerous weapon," the chief said, "and I don't think the public, by and large, understands how dangerous they are."
In 2010, the most recent year for which data are available, the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reported that 13,851 people were injured by BB and pellet guns.
In New York, anyone under the age of 16 is barred from possessing air-powered weapons like pellet guns, but there is little other regulation -- and none, apparently, about how realistic they can appear.
State business law prohibits the production or sale of realistic-looking fake weapons that don't have bright colors, but that measure does not apply to possessing them, nor does it apply to pellet or BB guns, according to the Legal Community Against Violence, a California-based group that aims to prevent gun violence by advocating for tighter controls at state and local levels.
Krokoff said he hopes for community involvement in solving the problem, though he said he's skeptical of any solution that involves simply requiring the weapons be brightly colored -- a safety measure easily neutralized with spray paint.
Thomas King, president of the New York State Rifle& Pistol Association, predicted any attempt to make the weapons less realistic would be met with sharp opposition from aficionados.
"If you want to see a battle, try to see when a law is proposed that will outlaw authentic-looking pellet guns. They are not going to want to fool around with a green colored or yellow-colored pellet gun," King said.
Krokoff said he suspects many of the city's armed robberies are actually committed with pellet or BB guns. Still, he said, he's not looking for a wholesale prohibition.
"I'm not trying to claim that we should outlaw pellet guns. I'm sure there are some legitimate uses for them," he said. "I just don't see the need for them in an urban environment. If you want them for target practice, that's fine. You don't need them in your waistband."
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On the Web
Video from an Albany police cruiser's camera of the traffic stop in which officers drew their weapons on a driver with an imitation pistol at http://www.timesunion.com
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