Mystery // Code of Silence pump-action shotgun toy

As an "adult" I am a reasonably well-adjusted, empathetic pussy. As a kid I was a total gun-nut, gore-hound violence-junkie, and spent my childhood either watching movies where people get blown apart, or running around with toy guns pretending to blow people apart. I had a toy chest, one of those wooden crates with a padded seat on top that flipped up to reveal toy storage. It had Disney's Pinocchio on it. It was filled with toy guns. It was more like a war chest, not a toy chest.

I had toy guns of every description, cheap cap guns, expensive replica ones that had actual loading clips, water guns, battery-operated fully-automatic water guns, sticky-dart guns, and guns that didn't really do anything except look exactly like real guns. All of these guns were either black, gun-metal grey, or shiny silver, just like real guns. This was back in the days when toy guns looked like real guns and weren't required to be neon coloured or have those little orange caps on the barrel to prevent kids from getting shot by cops.

Speaking of kids getting shot by cops, that's almost exactly what happened to a kid in my neighborhood when he went waving a toy gun around in front of a window in his apartment. I was maybe 8 or 9 and was walking home with aunt Judy when I heard this odd rhythmic pounding. We turned around to see a SWAT team running single file along the sidewalk directly behind us. We had to get out of their way or risk getting run over by this suped-up armed-to-the-teeth version of the law. As they passed by us I saw they were clutching M-16 machine guns and had smoke canisters hanging from their belts. I was like "cooooool". Mesmerized, we watched them march down the street and suddenly do an about-face at my house, marching right inside. "Holy shit" I thought, "somebody found my secret cache of GI Joes that I shoplifted from the Galleria Mall". Turns out the SWAT team wasn't there to negotiate a safe return of the GI Joes, but were instead using our house as a command post. Apparently some old lady called 911 when she saw a kid walk past his window holding a gun. Our house was directly behind the apartment in question, separated by our backyard, a junkyard and a lane.

It seemed obvious to all involved (including me) that the kid was simply playing with a toy gun, but the SWAT guys said they had to treat it like a legitimate threat anyway. This was fine by me since dudes with fucking machine guns were drinking coffee in my living room and tracking their dirty boots all over our carpets. I was in heaven. A real live action movie had taken over my house. It was basically the coolest thing that had ever happened to me and I could not wait to tell all my friends.

Despite the fact that nobody thought the gun was real, the SWAT guy who was working the phone and talking to the kids mother was speaking really sternly to her and saying some pretty harsh shit. He kept saying, "we realize that its only a water gun ma'am, but if Ricky (I don't remember the kids name) comes out the front door holding it, we will be forced to open fire". I was really confused by this. In the same sentence the SWAT guy was saying he knew it wasn't a real gun, but was also saying they would basically kill this poor kid if he came out holding the not-real-gun. I kept thinking of my mini-arsenal of not-real-guns upstairs in my bedroom. Anyway, the SWAT team didn't end up getting into a shootout with the water gun wielding kid so that was good. But it did give me a moments pause to consider how many times I'd been out in public waving an Uzi in one hand and a silver Beretta in the other.

I used to mod my guns out by attaching flashlights to the barrels with black electric tape, or painted paper towel roles to make grenade launchers, or I'd duct tape a handgun to the end of a machine gun to create a mega dual gun. On Saturdays I would stand over my war chest and agonize over which guns to take with me to my friend Andrew's house. I'd carefully select some pistols, a shotgun, some machine guns and then pack them all into an army green duffel bag and ride the subway uptown for an all-day shootout with my friends; the back lots of apartment high-rises our battlefield.

One of my favourite guns, was a black pump-action shotgun that made a satisfying click sound when you racked it. It shot rubber sticky darts. I purchased this gun at the Pop Shoppe store around the corner from my house in the west end of Toronto. This was 1986. The strange thing about this gun (although I didn't find it strange at the time) was that it was a movie tie-in. The movie was Code of Silence starring Chuck Norris and directed by Andrew Davis, who later went on to direct Above the Law, Under Siege and The Fugitive. It came in a plastic bag with a cardboard tag that read Code of Silence and had a picture of Chuck carrying the shotgun. The gun itself had a sticker on the handle that read Code of Silence as well. This is how I know it was a Code of Silence toy and not a figment of my imagination.

Code of Silence is not really the kind of action movie that you'd think would spawn a toy tie-in. It's about a cop taking on the mob and corrupt cops. It's a gritty, R rated movie set in Chicago (like most Davis movies). The kung fu of Norris is downplayed in favour of shootouts. It's violent and deals with the drug trade. Why the fuck would someone make a kids toy out of a movie that kids weren't allowed to see and presumably shouldn't have been watching?

In any case, somebody did and I owned this thing. So when I became adept at Internet sleuthing and nostalgia hunting in the wilds of ebay/youtube/imdb etc I began looking for this Code of Silence toy gun. I have found nothing. It's starting to bother me really. The Internet has made us accustomed to the cataloguing of every aspect of pop culture, no matter how useless or fringe. Not being able to turn up a single hit for this toy gun is disturbing me. Can something like this just vanish completely? Did anybody else own this thing but me? Is this Code of Silence toy shotgun my Rosebud?

At this point, to find some shred of evidence that this toy existed would probably make me feel dizzy. Like my SWAT story, the toy gun is just a memory that has been filed away for ages and only recently dusted off. The very fact that I can't turn up any mention of it anywhere is disorienting, since it was such an important artifact to me. I'm starting to wonder if both the story and the toy gun are just creations, a natural patch job my brain has performed, filling in the blanks with fiction to account for details that long ago slipped away. I haven't talked with anyone in my family about the SWAT incident since... well, since it happened I think. If I asked them about it now would they stare at me blankly? The Code of Silence gun seems such an improbable toy for a kid to be playing with, like a stuffed rabbit based on Fatal Attraction or a Wall Street toy briefcase . But in retrospect, if it did exist, it fell into the perfect hands. If it did exist, I have to find it.