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  1. Nothing story.

    The alternative could be they don’t act and they let an actual perpetrator go and innocent lives are lost.

    Would rather they were overly cautious in things like this

  2. Theres a reason that toy guns are brightly coloured, its to prevent this exact thing

    He sprayed the guns black to make them look more real and seems to have achieved that

  3. LazarusOwenhart on

    Sensible cosplayers know you don’t wear shit like that in public. You take it to the con in a bag.

  4. >The fake guns were originally brightly coloured, but had been sprayed black to make them look more realistic.

    What an idiot.

  5. Jimiheadphones on

    I cosplay and have done for years. This does happen every now and again. Some idiot got arrested over at Canary Wharf while doing a photoshoot because he had a massive replica firearm. Events do have rules that guns must have bright orange tips. Organisers often recommend that weapons be hidden until onsite. 

    With the big events, like MCM Comic Con at Excel, the police are well aware of the event. They might check a few weapons, a friend was asked if they could check his gun for the orange tip, but it was a conversation, not being jumped. For smaller conversations, cosplayers should really be displaying some common sense. We usually drive or taxi to conventions when we have weapons. This weekend, we’re walking to one locally, so we’ve swapped from weapon heavy cosplay to Disney cosplay so that people aren’t scared.

    The police should probably have been made aware of LAGC and to expect cosplayers which may have prevented the (rightful) actions from unarmed police. But it is on cosplayers to ensure they are public friendly too. Just get dressed there.

  6. JoyOf1000Kings on

    Insufferable thespian here. Once at college me and my mate were in a play about 1930s gangsters. We walked to college dressed in black with black machine guns hanging out of our bags. Not surprising that numerous police units pulled up at the campus….

    Now at 38 I can say what couple of stupid fucking idiots we were….

    These police were doing their job!
    Change the headline 😡

  7. “The fake guns were originally brightly coloured, but had been sprayed black to make them look more realistic.”

    I mean, in this case “replica firearm” is more accurate than “toy gun”. Dude knew exactly what he was doing.

    You can’t expect to walk around a city dressed in tactical gear with realistic looking weapons. Good on the police for acting so promptly without anyone getting hurt tbh.

  8. I mean come on… gotta use your common sense at some point. This was bound to happen, can’t blame the police for this.

  9. Correct headline: unarmed police tackle unknown person wearing full tactical gear after public reports of a firearm.

    – you cannot tell their age because they are wearing a mask/helmet

    – the gun has been painted to look real

    – called in from a genuine concern

    The headline wants you to close your eyes and imagine a kid running around with a water pistol while shouting ‘im 16’.

  10. love the whole the gun was painted black info not being in the headline. True headline police stop what they believe to be an armed individual .

  11. He was going to a convention. But all cosplayers know what he did was stupid. You don’t carry stuff that look like weapons in public outside a bag or carry case so you don’t get mistaken. Let alone wear full military gear and covering your face, without any hint that you’re in costume. Idiots like this makes cosplaying even more difficult for everyone else.

  12. This ‘boy’ was either an idiot or an attention seeker. Either way this was a case of fuck around and find out.

  13. Stupid as all hell to carry mock weapons that aren’t clearly mock. But it’s quite amusing to see the big umbrella patches on his shoulder.

  14. Deadliftdeadlife on

    Clearly wanted the smoke.

    You’d have to be some level of idiot to actively choose to keep it on your hip instead of putting it away in a bag while you travel

    Anyone taking comic con this seriously knows this.

  15. shamefully-epic on

    So many bad choices made by the kid.

    Painting the toy gun to look real.
    Covering his face.
    Dressing like a mass shooter.
    Walking like this in a “high value area” for terrorism.

    Bravo to the police for detaining him with no harm done.

  16. He was very lucky the football match was on, leading to him being tackled by unarmed officers and not the armed response unit.

  17. I,ve been to con,s and the rules are always the same for any replica weapons.orange tip at least.or keep in a bag till you arrive at the convention.the last one I went to in Manchester even had staff checking they were non firing an didn’t hold ammunition. Even swords and knives had to be plastic or rubber.

  18. SmackedWithARuler on

    Moment police tackle 16 year old carrying a realistic imitation firearm and wearing fake but realistic tactical body armour out of the original context of a comic con.

  19. Better to tackle a fool spray-painting a toy gun 9/10 times and look a bit silly, rather than do nothing and have a disaster 1/10 times.

  20. “Its probably nothing but there is a guy walking around in full tactical gear with a gun. ” so British 😂

  21. Our police are pretty stretched in regards to resources these days, so they have to prioritise certain crimes before anything else.

    A lot of low level crimes are essentially legal these days. A lot of stuff is unenforced.

    But the one thing they’ll take seriously and deal with in literal minutes is a realistic threat to public safety. If you’re walking around with what can be perceived as a gun, especially in today’s climate, you’re gonna get tackled before you even know it.

    Anybody who’s even tangentially involved in the cosplay scene in this country knows you don’t walk around with prop guns and swords publicly. It’s not a secret.

  22. People on this thread are calling him an idiot. Meanwhile, I had no clue that there was a law against producing imitation firearms. 🤡

  23. I mean he painted the guns black so they looked real. Surely it’s better to be cautious If the guns were bright orange or you could clearly see they were toys then fair enough but this was warranted in the circumstances

  24. The perils of fancy dress.

    I’m sure he’s learnt a valuable lesson and at least he’ll have a nice story to tell for the rest of his life.

    I’m not surprised people were alarmed, especially in such a crowded area.

  25. I know the police get a lot of shit but they were unarmed, acted swiftly and given they had absolutely no idea in the moment this guy wasn’t a mass shooter, acted with extreme bravery and professionalism.

  26. I have no problem with this. Old enough to know what you’re risking if you wave anything around that looks like a gun.

  27. What an idiot.

    Put your props in a bag FFS. Lucky the cops here don’t shoot first.

    Bro is going to now have a firearms offence on his name

  28. I work in the film industry and I have personally made the call to plod to let them know we’re doing something with replica weapons (and even real weapons).

    What this punter did was likely pretty stupid, although I’m not very impressed with armed police who can’t recognise an Umbrella Corporation patch. I identified it in the first few wobbly frames of body cam footage. It’s not that hard. Fuck’s sake.

    Anyway. Normally one would call plod and tell him what’s going on beforehand. I would expect a convention to have done that in order to minimise the chances of exactly this. Plod is often not very good at passing on this information internally, not very bright, and very keen to start jumping on people. Sometimes they will rock up, instantly lose their tempers and start yelling at people even when they’ve been told very specifically what’s going on. I’ve seen it happen. That would change things and I wonder if that’s at play here.

    The rules on imitation weapons are pretty permissive for filming stuff. The rules as I understand them rely on a very loose description of what a qualifying film production which was written long before the common ownership of video cameras, let alone smartphones.

    I wouldn’t want to see those rules tightened up too much. What you’d likely get would be an expensive permitting process which would put small organisations, including YouTubers, off doing it. The last thing we need is the UK becoming an even worse place to do things.

    But anyway, there could be some stuff under the surface here that we’d need to know about.