Airsoft guns often look much like real firearms, except for the orange tip. This has been the source of much consternation by anti-gunners, to be sure, but there is another key difference between airsoft guns and real ones, and that’s the packaging.

Firearms today are often sold with a case of some kind, but they’re not otherwise packaged. That’s because buyers need to see and feel the gun in their hands. They need to test things like the trigger pull, how tight the springs are when racking the slide, and how easily they can acquire a sight picture with the weapon.

Plus, when you buy it, the seller needs to be able to see the serial number for the paperwork, which probably also plays a slight factor.

Airsoft and BB guns, though, are sealed in blister packs like many other products you can buy at the store.

Yet a California lawmaker, who is one of the state’s most anti-gun voices, didn’t know this little tidbit.

An attempt by Asm. David Chiu (D–San Francisco) to tie a piece of litter on the streets of his hometown to on-going gun violence in the city ended with a bit of egg on the legislator’s face.

Sunday, Chiu tweeted out a photo of the “discarded packaging of a semi-automatic on a leisurely weekend walk.”

Chiu included a photo of the packaging for a Glock 19 semi-automatic air-soft BB gun, which – though designed similar to the Glock 19 – is not a firearm.

The BB gun, though not pictured in Chiu’s tweet, is usually tipped with an orange muzzle to denote that it is not a firearm.

The packaging, however, does note that the gun was the airsoft version rather than the firearm.

Chiu did eventually delete the tweet, but the damage was done.

Yeah, he’s been ridiculed left and right, and for damn good reason, too. This is a man who argues like he understands guns, gun violence, and gun crimes, yet he doesn’t even know how firearms are packaged, for crying out loud.

Maybe he should have chatted with former assemblyman Leland Ye about that. I’m sure Ye would know how real guns are packaged, even if he was ignorant about airsoft guns.

Chiu, like so many others who want to legislate away our right to keep and bear arms, will often present himself as something of an expert on the topic of guns. He’ll say things like how it’s just too easy to get firearms and so on. Meanwhile, he’s clearly never set foot inside of a gun store in his life. If so, he’d have known that the packaging didn’t fit what he’d seen in the stores.

It’s an unfortunate fact that many, if not most anti-gunners, are completely ignorant about firearms. They buy into media hype or listen to anti-gun groups.

However, if Chiu really has concerns about the violent crime rate, then maybe he should talk to his colleagues about AB-1509, which repeals penalties for using a firearm in a crime. If Chiu thinks guns are such a problem, then maybe he should come out and oppose that bill instead of freaking out over pieces of litter that he didn’t even bother to examine too closely.

Then again, that might be asking a bit much from an anti-gunner.