The comment George made about the government thinking of banning toy guns (and keeping the real ones) was because at the time of the special, the federal government was debating such a move based on incidents where children were killed by police when they mistook certain toy guns, like the Entertech water guns (which were promoted as looking, feeling, and sounding like their real counterparts) and the Laser Tag blasters, as real guns, and also in the case of the Entertech guns, being used when actual crimes were committed. While a ban never happened, all toy guns in America started to be manufactured with different colors that were supposed to easily differentiate them from real firearms.
Original airing ran live on HBO.