Prop-gun gotcha: injustice in New Jersey.

• Author: Brown, Elizabeth Nolan
• Position: Fake guns - Brief article

A film extra faces up to five years of lockup for brandishing a fake gun during a movie shoot.

The trouble started last year, when comedian Carlo Bellario took an unpaid role as a drug lord's henchman in an independent film called Vendetta Games. The scene was a car-chase segment that required Bellario to wave an airsoft pellet gun out the window while his automobile sped through the New jersey neighborhood of Woodbridge.

When shooting was finished, the actors found themselves surrounded by real cop cars. Alarmed residents had apparently called the authorities. Once on the scene, police determined that the film's producers had neither a film permit nor a permit for the prop gun Bellario had used.

Just one person--Bellario--was arrested. The comedian spent four days in a county jail for unauthorized possession of a handgun before his family was able to post...