Several young people have been arrested in Haarlemmermeer in recent weeks for shooting passers-by with a gel blaster.
That is what the police say to NH Nieuws, following a reaction from the Haarlemmermeer base team during a live stream on facebook. These are two minors. It is not known exactly where and when they were arrested. They have been referred to Halt, the spokesman said.
During the weekly livestream, a follower writes that she has heard about a number of incidents, and wonders what the police can do about it. The police say they are aware of the incidents and are following up on them. “We have arrested young people for it in recent weeks.”
TikTok Challenge
While the strong similarities between some fake firearms and real firearms have been a source of concern to police for some time, the use of gel blasters has recently been fueled by a TikTok challenge.
From toys to prohibited weapon
Legally, the gel blaster is an interesting phenomenon. Because these are toys for children, they can ‘just’ play with them on the street. Those toys really turn into a “forbidden weapon” when threatened or shot at people (which happens a lot in the TikTok challenges).
Thanks to the ball-filled reservoir on top of the barrel, many gel blasters are fairly easy to distinguish from real weapons. This is less true for gel blasters that are loaded with a charger on the bottom.
The often bright colors also make gel blasters relatively easy to recognize. However, the police emphasize that they cannot rely on the color of the toys. “We’re on the safe side. Real firearms also come in different (bright) colors,” writes the police.
Mostly young users share videos on the platform where they shoot people with a gel blaster, and challenge their followers to do the same. After several shelling with gel blasters were reported in Utrecht in a short time last month, the national police warned for ‘the enormously profound effects that the social media trend can have on the lives of young people’.
Experiences
The closed Facebook group Warnings Hoofddorp eo has warned several times in recent weeks about young people shooting random passers-by. For example, a man raised the alarm on 20 August after his daughter was shot at ‘with blue balls’ when she was walking from the Zuidtangent Overbos/IJweg stop to Kruisweg.
Last weekend it would have been hit again, according to the warning of a young man in the same group. He and his girlfriend were shot at on the Waddenweg, he writes. The poster seems convinced that it is a ‘fully automatic BB weapon’, referring to an airsoft weapon. A striking similarity is that both targets were shot at from a moving car.
Ouch (or worse?)
The gel/water balls from a gel blaster are not life-threatening, but can cause a bruise or burn. Permanent injury is also possible, for example if the ball ends up in an eye.
Very annoying and undesirable, the police emphasize, although the advance of the gel blaster is causing greater concern. Because the police ‘are on the safe side’ there is a risk that officers will mistake a gel blaster for a real firearm and act accordingly. That happened recently in Rotterdam, where an officer fired a warning shot to arrest a young person who had fired a gel blaster – as it turned out later.
A gel blaster that can hardly be distinguished from a real weapon is the AR-15, which, according to the police, resembles an ‘automatic rifle’ like two drops of water. Incidentally, gel blasters are often confused with (also legal) airsoft guns, or vice versa.
The police are calling on parents to realize that their children with gel blasters (and fake guns in general) can cause ‘very dangerous’ situations. Nevertheless, the weapons are also popular among older youth and young adults, the spokesperson emphasizes. For example, a 20-year-old and a 21-year-old man were recently arrested after shooting a with a gel blaster had shot at building in Heemskerk.