“Until imitation guns are made safer, parents should stop buying them.”

Via the New Haven Register:

Without changes to the way toy and imitation guns are manufactured, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., says child’s play presents real dangers to public safety.

Blumenthal last week introduced his “Imitation Firearms Safety Act,” which would require the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to develop a permanent, colorful change to the barrel of any imitation gun, including paintball guns and BB guns, although what that change looks like would vary based on the type of imitation gun.

A 1988 federal law requires that all toy guns have a bright orange plug, but Blumenthal demonstrated at a Friday press conference how it could be easily removed with pliers, or painted .

“What needs to be done that my legislation would do is to have a much larger, clearly colored marker so that the barrel is unmistakably identifiable as a lookalike or toy and therefore cannot be removed,” Blumenthal said Friday in a phone interview.

Read more here.