Heyward wouldn’t be the last. In December 2010, Rohayent Gomez, also 13 at the time, was playing cops and robbers with his friends in Glassell Park in Los Angeles. They were confronted by two L.A.P.D. officers, who, according to their statements to investigators, were on the lookout for graffiti and gang activity. Upon spotting an “airsoft” pistol on Gomez, one officer shot him in the chest, leaving him paralyzed.

Last month, Tamir Rice was in a park in Cleveland holding an airsoft pistol from which the blaze orange plug had been removed. According to a 911 caller, Rice waved the pistol in the air and pointed it at others in the park. The caller told the police dispatcher he didn’t think the gun was real, but that was not relayed to responding officers. In video footage released by the Cleveland Police Department, a police cruiser pulls up alongside Rice, who is standing by a gazebo. Less than two seconds after the car stops, Rice, shot in the torso, crumples to the ground and disappears from sight.

Cleveland authorities quickly released a photo of the airsoft. All black with a textured grip, it looks so much like the real thing that you might wonder if, in the two seconds it took the police officer to shoot Rice, a blaze orange plug would have even been noticed. Besides, the gun’s barrel was reportedly tucked into the waistband of Rice’s pants.

In response to Rice’s shooting, Aaron Dilks, a St. Louis County police officer, wrote a post on his department’s Facebook page titled, “Kids Will Be Kids?” He warned parents of the risks airsoft and other replica weapons could pose to their children’s lives, how all realistic toy guns would be treated as real by law enforcement. “The police will respond [with] lights and sirens and come to a screeching halt in the area where your child is playing with the gun,” he wrote, before offering tips for how to ensure their safety: comply with officers’ instructions, drop the gun immediately and don’t run away.

Rice didn’t seem to have time for any of that, nor did John Crawford III, a 22-year-old father of two who was shot by the police in an Ohio Wal-Mart just three months earlier. At the time he was killed, Crawford was holding an MK-177 pellet rifle. A concerned shopper called 911 and said that Crawford had been pointing it at children (but later recanted this statement). The surveillance video that has been released to the public does not show Crawford pointing the rifle at anyone, nor does it corroborate the testimony of the police, who said they shot Crawford after delivering several verbal warnings. Instead, the video shows Crawford chatting on his cellphone, the pellet rifle swinging from his hand. According to the person who was on the other end of the line, Crawford only had time to say, “It’s not real,” before the gunfire started.

Rice and Crawford, both killed in Ohio, had less than a total of five seconds to respond before police opened fire.

Last month, in response to the shootings, Alicia Reece, an Ohio state legislator, announced that she would be introducing legislation to expand existing laws mandating bright markings on replica guns to include BB, pellet and airsoft weapons. But Reece’s legislation, if passed, would not prevent children from painting over any brightly colored markings, and it certainly would not force the police to take more time to assess a potentially dangerous situation.

More subtly, a focus on regulation serves to excise the deaths of Tamir Rice and John Crawford III from the larger conversation on race and policing that began anew with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. What little information exists on police shootings of people with toy guns suggests that blacks and Latinos are overrepresented among the victims. The 26 years that have passed since Roberti’s proposition have proved too little about the efficacy of blaze orange, and too much about the inevitability of tragedy in neighborhoods where even children at play can be presumed guilty.