Perhaps a new debate about gun control is needed in America. Not about real firearms – but about “toys” that sometimes cause needless deaths of children.

Regularly enough that the scenario is familiar to many people, law enforcement officers kill a child because of a mistake. Dispatchers are called by people concerned a boy is brandishing a gun. Officers arrive, order the youth to put the weapon down and, instead, he moves as if to fire at them.

Deputies or officers, with just split-seconds to react, shoot the lad. To their horror, they find he was armed only with a realistic-looking toy or pellet pistol.

Any reasonable person who has seen such “toys” understands. Many look much like real firearms. They are much different than the plastic “pretend” guns many adults enjoyed when they were young.

Some makers of realistic-looking toys or pellet guns place orange plastic tips on their barrels, in an attempt to make mistakes less likely.

That did not help 12-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland. The orange tip had been removed from the pistol he had when a police officer shot and killed him a few weeks ago.

No discussion of new limits of any kind on real firearms can occur without concern about the Second Amendment. Americans are guaranteed the right to keep and bear real firearms.

Some in government have gone too far in infringing upon that right. Powerful forces have been at work in attempts to virtually eviscerate the Second Amendment. Those efforts must be resisted.

But the Second Amendment contains no guarantee of a child’s right to be killed because of a mistake.

For years, we have been among those urging that parents be cautious in allowing their children to carry realistic-looking toy or pellet guns in public. Such suggestions have had only limited success.

It has been suggested federal laws should be enacted to prohibit sale of toy or pellet guns that could be mistaken for the real thing. There are many pros and cons to that argument.

Can the issue be linked to the Second Amendment? We don’t see how – but like most other reasonable people, we’re willing to consider other viewpoints.

That, after all, is how we do things in this country. But without even agreeing to discuss the issue, there will be no consensus and nothing will change. And that would mean more children dying needlessly.