A youthful game in which players don camouflage fatigues and carry realistic looking “assault rifles” while scoring points for killing rival players in unusual ways is filtering out from schools and into neighborhoods – and prompting nervous calls from edgy residents as a result.
The game, born in area schools and known as Assassin or Gotcha, is a social roleplaying game where participants attempt to “kill” other players by touching them with a pretend weapon – sometimes Nerf guns, sprays, or plastic swords – but increasingly realistic looking Airsoft guns.
Players are usually assigned specific individuals to hunt, and are assigned to hunt that player’s target if they successfully take them out. Since there are no official rules for the game, there are a variety of ways to play with at least one group of local players finding themselves confronted by armed police seeking “suspicious men in face masks with guns.”
If you know kids playing the game some counseling may be in order. We’ll leave that part up to you.
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Very not smart thing to do. There are a lot of real guns out there wothnervous people behind them.
Anyone here a 80’s kid that had Entertech water guns? Running around L.A. neighborhoods with all black realistic looking guns wasn’t good then and not good now. My dad said they got lost in the move when I was 10. Yeah right. Glad they disappeared so I didn’t end up an accidental statistic.
Airsoft guns are even more realistic now then consider there are teens or “suspicious men in face masks” is even more concerning. Hopefully parents are parenting and warning their kids of the dangers before some scared neighbor makes the mistake of killing a kid.