What I asked about was training police to recognize the difference between children and adults. However, you’re wrong about not being able to tell the difference between a tiny caliber bb gun or pellet rifle and a regular rifle. Even small regular rifles , ie, .223 cal or 22 cal have larger diameter barrels than do novelty guns. Novelty guns are generally narrower in the stock than actual weapons. That’s another characteristic to notice. There are also more subtle clues like the weight of the gun. Real weapons, even lighter weight tactical weapons, have obvious weight to them. Novelty guns can easily be tossed about or carried with one hand while running through the woods pretending to be Davey Crockett. (I did that in childhood, not recently.) Maybe you can’t tell the difference nor would a lit of people. I however, an quite well versed with munitions and weaponry, as I would expect any police officer to be…my question was because of how many teenaged boys have been killed in the last several years. My son is 14 and as tall as his uncles but if you look at him you can see that he’s a boy, not s man. It seems to me that if officers knew they were dealing with a child then they would navigate the situation a little differently. At least I hope so. I can understand why you could be confused. It wasn’t a great question. I kind of blurted it out through ny finger tips while walking to a meeting.*** I should say that it’s easy to tell the difference in barrel diameter when it is not dark out.