Early this morning, police were summoned to the backyard of a private home in Victoria, British Columbia, when neighbors reported seeing a couple sitting at a table holding a chrome gun. Cops cordoned off the entire block and evacuated the area—remember, Canada has much tougher gun restrictions than the U.S.—only to find, after hours of hullabaloo, that the "chrome gun" was really a $39.99 hollow belt buckle shaped like a handgun.

What.

"It looks very realistic," Constable Mike Russell told the local paper. "A fashion statement like that will attract the attention of police."

Have you ever had a run-in with the law over weapon-inspired jewelry and accessories before?

A few years ago, I went on a mini-tour with a Goth-metal band traveling through the U.S. from Scandinavia. Their publicist—who, how do I put this, definitely dressed the part of a Goth-metal band publicist—had a habit of wearing tons of necklaces, bracelets, and rings laden with gun and knife-motif charms and pendants. When we were leaving Detroit one afternoon, I watched her carefully strip off her jewelry at the hotel and pack it in her check-in luggage.

"Aren't you worried they'll get lost if the airline loses your bag?" I asked

"There's no way I can wear those on the plane or check them in," she said. "They'll get taken away."

Turns out, she'd already lost a bunch of gorgeous firearm-inspired necklaces on a previous flight, when she was forced to abandon them at security because they resembled weapons. Yes, we're talking about tiny, three-inch silver, gold, pewter, and bronze pendants that no way were real guns.

When I was chatting with Sophia about this story earlier today, she told me an amazing story about how her friend had to throw away her Giuseppe Zanotti shoes at security because the TSA agents thought the heels resembled bullets—and they wouldn't take the shoes and mail them to her home address. Thousand-dollar Zanottis, down the hatch. So sad!

What do you think of gun-, knife-, and weapon-inspired accessories? Do you own any? Do you think we, as a society, have gotten too paranoid? Or should the TSA be able to make you remove or throw away anything that even looks like a gun before you fly? Sound off in the comments, below! I'm dying to know what you think.

Photo: Courtesy