14 December—Here are pictures of three semiautomatic pistols. Well, not quite. The top two are toys built with mostly grey Lego blocks—or bricks, if you prefer. The top one is closely modeled on the legendary Colt 1911 M1 A1, as you can see in the picture. The gun in the middle is rather less closely modeled on no specific pistol I can think of.

Both Lego pistols are illegal, even though the middle one clearly looks like a toy—to me, anyway. They’re verboten because federal law prohibits toys being made to look like guns. Now I think of it, would these Lego-brick toy guns that are assembled from individual components be considered ghost toy guns?

That takes us to the bottom picture of what is obviously a Lego toy pistol. Problem is, however, it’s the real thing. Yes, it’s not a Lego toy at all, but a real, working, firing sidearm. It looks like it’s made of Lego bricks to resemble a colorful Glock 19 pistol with enhanced optics and Lego bricks are in fact used in the enhancement (customization? colorization?) of a conventional Black Glock. In a purely decorative, non-functional way, to be sure.

What looks like a toy, then, is an actual semiautomatic pistol that fires actual 9mm bullets and is supposed to be registered like all handguns (and who knows what else if King Ned gets his way). The several-hundred-dollar customization is cleverly called a Block 19 by the manufacturer.

And, as long as the pistol is registered, it’s entirely lawful to carry a Block 19 openly in most of the United States, including Connecticut, as far as I’ve been able to determine, but not in New York State. Because, while you’re not supposed to carry a toy that looks like a real gun, it’s perfectly legal to keep and bear a real gun that looks like a toy.

Frankly, I think the Lego look is too tempting if there are little kids around. But we don’t worry about that in Connecticut because guns have to be locked up so kids can’t get at them. And adults, if King Ned and his court were to have their way.

I just bought myself a $15.99 Lego watch for a birthday present, but I have no intention of blowing several hundred bucks on an excessively chromatic pistol to go with it. On the other hand, since police adore their Glocks, wouldn’t it be nice if they packed Blocks to add some color to their lackluster uniforms?