That's the thing though, in the civilised world, if you see something like this in the hands of a child, you'd assume it's a toy.

Maybe this is more a reflection of the US being civilized or not, but there are teenage “children” the same size as the kid in this story, using actual guns to commit violent robberies in parts of my city. So it’s not trivial to determine whether an adult-sized human holding a black gun is a threat or not.

This is America; Owning a real gun should not be an acceptable reason to be shot by the police. What the fuck is the point of all the aggressive defense around the second amendment if the second a cop sees a gun they are free to murder people?

Cops are not judge, jury, and executioners, and in fact have zero authority to hand down punishment. Being shot for holding a gun is absurd.

Is it that unreasonable? An adult-sized person was waving a realistic looking gun around and (allegedly) pointing it at houses. Some attempt at deescalation needs to be made, but if that fails, I wouldn’t want the cop to just shrug and leave. I’d expect him to do whatever it takes to remove the gun from this individual.

There’s a huge difference between simply owning a gun vs wandering around in public pointing it at people.