In the last six months, Airsoft guns and pocket bikes have become wildly popular "toys" among youth and adults alike, but the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Department is warning anyone who wants to "play" with these new gadgets to exercise extreme caution.

"It's only a matter of time before someone gets killed," says Sgt. Bill Tait with the Sheriff's Department.

On March 29, Leigh High School experienced a lockdown, as a youth brandishing what looked like a weapon was seen walking toward the campus in the early morning. When the boy was found, police discovered that the gun in his hand was an Airsoft gun. Likewise, speed demons are increasingly riding pocket bikes—miniature versions of motorcycles that sit dangerously close to the ground. Campbell police officer Dave Cameron has seen pocket bike riders traveling on the wrong side of the street, without helmets and even while drunk. "I arrested him after he ran into the back of a parked car," Cameron says. "He almost did himself in."

When improperly used, both Airsoft guns and pocket bikes flirt dangerously with the limits of the law, so popularity of both items has caused problems for local police departments. However, they're still readily available.

Tait says that Airsoft guns have posed a problem in Cupertino. Although by law any replica of a firearm must have a bright orange tip to distinguish it from a real gun, the realism of the models has gotten so accurate that police are finding it more difficult to tell if a gun is real or fake. "The last batch we confiscated, you couldn't tell from one foot away that they weren't the real things," Tait says. To make matters worse, some Airsoft gun owners paint over the orange tip with black markers to give the facsimile a more realistic appearance.

And with memories of the disaster at Columbine High School in Colorado fresh on their minds, police are under greater pressure to take quick action on potentially dangerous situations involving guns, which can result in officers drawing their own weapons.

Tait says that minors have taken their Airsoft guns to Cupertino parks after hours, a violation in itself, and the Sheriff's Department has received calls from neighbors convinced that actual gunplay is taking place near their homes. Officers are then dispatched to deal with the problem, not knowing that the participants are playing with fakes.

"Kids are having little combat games in parks, but we approach it as a tactical situation," Tait says.

It's been about a month and a half since the most recent incident in Cupertino, Tait says. Airsoft guns were making increasingly frequent appearances toward the end of 2003 in Cupertino, particularly in Linda Vista Park. While the trend seems to have died out a bit, Airsoft guns are classified as pellet guns, which are illegal to discharge anywhere within Cupertino city limits at any time.

Children are also getting their hands on Airsoft guns. Campbell police officer Carlos Guerrero is a DARE officer who routinely visits schools in the Campbell Union School District. He says he's interviewed many children, and about 15 percent of the fifth-graders in the district say they have Airsoft guns. But youngsters are only the latest people caught up in a hobby whose popularity began three decades ago.

Some people say the Airsoft hobby got its start in the early 1970s, when a major U.S. BB gun manufacturer invented a new type of gun that used a small amount of air to shoot lightweight plastic or ceramic BBs. Traditional BB guns shoot metal projectiles.

The hobby, however, didn't really take off in a big way until Japanese companies began making them in the late 1980s. Toy manufacturers there began to make nearly 1-to-1 scale-size Airsoft replicas of real guns, paying close attention to reproduce not only the dimensions and colors of the real thing, but the weight, balance and loading mechanisms as well.

Because the replicas were virtually identical to the real thing, the Airsoft hobby satisfied the need of people who were enthralled by guns but had no access to them in their country because of a nationwide ban on firearms. By the early 1990s, Airsoft was as popular in Japan as paintball was in the United States. And the Airsoft hobby soon began to gain traction in the United States, with both adults and children attracted to the allure of realistic-looking weapons.

"Some people are just curious and excited about guns," Guerrero says. "And Airsoft is as close as they're going to get. For them it's cool."

Today, Airsoft war-gaming clubs are sprouting up all around the country. People, especially teenagers and males in their 20s, run around forests and mocked-up urban warfare settings shooting each other with spring-loaded, gas-powered or electrically fired guns of all sizes and shapes.

And places like Santa Clara's Airsoft Extreme, the only store in the South Bay dedicated specifically to the Airsoft hobby, are supplying these new hobbyists with everything they need.

Visitors to the shop on Laurelwood Avenue can take their pick of Airsoft guns ranging in price from about $100 to a couple of thousand dollars. Shoppers can find everything from a replica of the Heckler & Koch USP 45 Compact—a semiautomatic pistol issued to detectives in the Campbell Police Department—to a life-size Airsoft replica of an M-60 machine gun, which Sylvester Stallone made popular in his first Rambo movie.

"Airsoft Extreme is where are all the hard-core enthusiasts go," Guerrero says. "It's like they have a replica for every pistol, rifle or shotgun ever made."

Customers who go there are generally willing to pay hefty prices for guns because they are true hobbyists who know what they want and know how to take care of the guns, he says. If someone there is new to the Airsoft hobby, the staff behind the counter will explain in full detail the dos and don'ts of handling a gun. The store won't sell to any customers under 18 years of age, unless the buyers are accompanied by their parents.

But the hard-core hobbyists aren't the ones the police are worried about.

Less-expensive Airsoft guns can be found at places like Sportmart, Big 5 Sporting Goods and even Fry's Electronics. Typically selling for about $25, these lower-end, affordable guns often find their way into the hands of children and adults who may not be knowledgeable about the safety precautions or may not care.

Gremic Sports in Los Gatos sells these less-expensive versions.

"We sell mostly to the casual hobbyist," says manager Scott Van Leuwenn. However, he ensures that anyone buying guns at his store can produce identification showing that he or she is at least 18.

"Anyone underage who got their guns from us had to have had their parent buy it for them," he says.

Guerrero says it's very important for parents to tell their children that the guns should be treated as real guns. They should never be pointed at someone and they should always be handled with care.'

Pocket bikes

Pocket bikes are another recent phenomenon for which police are urging caution. Originally introduced as racing bikes in Europe and Asia, they have recently found their way into the homes and streets of America.

The typical pocket bike looks like a replica of a real racing motorcycle, except it is about a quarter of the size. The pocket bikes come in two types: those with electric-powered engines and those with gas-powered engines. Entry-level bikes can be found at flea markets, auto dealers and various retail shops for approximately $200 to $300.

"We've been seeing them all over the place," Tait says. "We were initially waiting for the state to rule over their classification, so we were taking a hands-off approach." Pocket bikes are actually classified as motor-driven cycles, but because the California Department of Motor Vehicles doesn't register them, none are legal on public roads. The decision on classification came down from the state fairly recently, so Tait has now informed his officers on the proper procedure when they find people riding pocket bikes in the streets.

This has been a growing problem, because these bikes are still often marketed as scooters, which leads people to believe that they are street legal and do not require a license.

"We don't have problems with the motorcycles themselves," Cameron says, who explains that they are perfectly fine if driven on private property with the owner's permission. "We have problems with the way some people are selling them."

At the San Jose Flea Market on Berryessa Avenue, for example, merchants sell pocket bikes in a stall that refers to them as scooters. And once most people buy them, they don't understand the laws that they must follow. "They can't be registered for roadway use, so anyone riding one could be cited and their bike seized. The bikes are cheap, but it could be a couple hundred bucks to get them out of storage," Tait says.

"People are riding these things are all over the place," Cameron adds. "The main thing is that they're illegal to be on a public roadway, period." Tait says that he hasn't heard of specific accidents with pocket bikes, but their size and configuration seem to make such incidents inevitable. "They sit very low to the ground," he says.

Although it isn't required for the driver of a pocket bike to have a license right now, a new bill is up in the state Assembly that will require drivers to have a motorcycle license to operate pocket bikes. But police officers say they wish that such legislation wasn't necessary.

"A little common sense goes a long way," Tait says.