Philly City Council president wields toy gun during budget hearing to highlight danger to kids

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Philadelphia City Council President Kenyatta Johnson pulled a gun in City Hall on Tuesday afternoon — a toy gun.

Before pulling out the realistic-looking plastic gun, Johnson warned a room full of police officers in City Hall for the department’s budget hearing.

“Don’t everyone pull out [your guns],” Johnson said. “It’s not real.”

The black handgun Johnson held up had a large, cylindrical magazine at the bottom of the grip. It did not have any markings identifying it as a toy as mandated by federal regulations, which require the use of orange coloring on the barrel of toy firearms.

“When stores provide products like these in neighborhoods, it perpetuates a cycle which makes our neighborhoods unsafe, your jobs unsafe and it’s clearly illegal,” Johnson told the officers in attendance.

Johnson said the toy gun came from a store in the city but did not specify exactly where. Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel said he was willing to visit the store to explain the importance of not selling toy guns like that to kids in the city.

“That’s a conversation I want to have with those individuals and tell them, [so they] know the impact and the danger they are having with our children,” Bethel said.

Philadelphia has specific regulations about toy guns, which go further than the federal regulations.

According to City Code, such toys are required to be marked so that “the entire exterior surface of such toy or imitation firearm is colored white, bright red, bright orange, bright yellow, bright blue, bright pink or bright purple, either singly or as the predominant color in combination with other colors in any pattern,” or the barrel must be closed “with a blaze orange plug,”

During the hearing, council members and police talked about working with the city’s Department of Licenses and Inspections to enforce the regulations.

Johnson said he was concerned that the toy could be mistaken for the real thing, and a police officer would shoot someone not thinking they only had a toy. He chastised those who would think of selling such a toy.

“You’re taking advantage of our neighborhoods, right? Whether it’s the vaping, whether it’s the crack pipes that’s being sold, but this is definitely destruction,” he said. “Grooming young people at a very, very, very early age, right? And it’s putting everybody’s life at stake.”

City Council did not make a final decision about how to proceed with enforcement of the city regulation on markings on toy guns.