I own airsoft (pellet) guns people have confused for real ones when I left them on a shelf in my house. If you don't know what to look for they look quite convincing these days. Take a look around https://www.evike.com/airsoft-guns/ - everyone deletes or spray paints the orange tips because they make you really visible on the airsoft field.

It's not like you can allow kids to shoot pellet guns out of a car indefinitely in a metro without substantial risk of something going wrong.

We need to (be able to) trust the police to not escalate irresponsibly and to deal with situations with nuance. Declining to escalate to authorities because we're scared of what they may do is not great.

Really only airsofters know telltale signs of toy guns. Guys into real guns can't instantly tell them apart.

It's that way because real guns weren't available in Japan but real-ism wasn't defined, so Japanese toy gun brands just turned that volume up to 1100 without allowing toy guns take pressure bearing gun parts. And then those toy guns got exported and copied, leading to the present status.

Absolutely not. A human driver has to watch the road and can’t scrutinize a gun.

And it’s also not easy to tell toys from real guns. Many cities illegalized toy guns on public transit because people were putting orange tips on real guns to make them look like toys. 3D-printed guns rarely look like they can actually fire, even though they can.

You'd never had a discussion about firearms with the average person then. Good luck.

Probably

So? In the real scenario, the underage passengers were drinking alcohol. Also, the 14-17 teen accounts are supposed to be monitored by parents, otherwise all riders need to be adults or their guests. That means they need to exercise judgment not brandishing what might look like weapons. The same way you need to exercise that judgment in a public park.

And I'm not even convinced that human drivers would be more discerning or rational about it. They could easily overstate the issue to police and create a more biased situation.

I’m not sure the line is that clear.

Any gun shooting projectiles out of a moving vehicle is dangerous. Pellet guns and paintball guns are less dangerous than “regular” guns, but they’re not really toys.