When I founded the Decadent Students' Association, some of the early members suggested that, as the Founding Fathers, we should all have some special badge of office.

So we were off to the dollar store.

Oh, they looked so beautiful, those shining chrome-painted capguns, the "Police Specials," sitting in their packages. "Buy us," they seemed to say. What young man could resist?

Little did we know the trouble those toys would get me into.

More to the point, little did we know that those toys would be pulled from the shelves within weeks of my purchase. Did you know that capguns are required by law to either look really cartoony or have a little orange plastic cap on them?

I sure didn't.

Now, flash forward a couple of months, to late October. I'm driving down the road with my friend Adam. We are stopped at a red light, turning left.

A van full of chubby fellas in Hawaiian shirts pulls up beside us. They are going straight.

Adam figures, in his special way, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if I shot some strangers?!"

Our windows were closed. Their windows were closed. Adam shot a whole little ring of shots -- eight shots total. We were laughing. They were laughing. It was all in good fun.

So we promptly forgot all about it.

When we got downtown, I parked in one of my favourite (free) spots, which just happened to be about fifteen metres from the police station. We exit the vehicle. Adam lights up a smoke.

A little skinny cop is walking up the road.

"Hey there fellas," he pipes. "How're yas doin' today?"

"We're fine, thanks," I say, completely unawares of what is about to happen.

He walks a few more steps, until he can read my license plate. At which point he kindly says, "Put your hands where I can see them."

"Wuh-oh!" I thought. "What the hell is this?"

As if by magic, in the blink of an eye, there were three cop cars and (what passes in Charlottetown for) a paddywagon, lights going silently. Cops everywhere, notepads out.

They frisk Adam, which was nice, because he deserved it.

"Where are the guns?" they ask us.

"What, you mean the capguns?" we reply.

"CAPGUNS?!" they say.

And at this point, I had my anagnorisis.

So did the cops.

They take the guns, and load Adam and me into the paddywagon. They knew they didn't need cuffs. The cop in the driver's seat speaks.

"Now, technically, you boys are under arrest." He knew it was as stupid as I did.

They drove us the 15m to the police station. Then they separated us and began to interrogate.

At least our stories were consistent. My story was, "It's all Adam's fault." Adam's story was, "It's all my fault."

It would have been worse for Adam than for me. He was eighteen, and the "perp." I was seventeen, technically a juvenile, and I was only the "accessory."

"So," the cop who was interrogating me asked, "did you not realise that they looked like real guns?"

"Well, jeepers, officer," I replied, "I'm just a simple Island boy. I've never seen a real gun before."

Obligingly, the officer unstraps his own piece and lays it on the table, next to my own toy.

His was matte black, and mine was shining chrome. His was slightly larger. That was the only difference.

My jaw dropped.

"Now, the person who called in isn't pressing any charges," the officer continued. "But I'm still going to have to call your dad so he can come and pick you up."

When my dad showed up at the station, he had already heard the whole story from the cops. All he did was smile and say, "You think you can make it home alright?"

And that's the true story of how I got arrested as an accessory to a firearms violation.