That Gerard Moore is not dead today, or lying in a hospital bed, is a miracle he probably doesn’t deserve.

On a Friday night just about two weeks ago, a team of Boston School Police officers responded to a call of a man flashing a semi-automatic pistol in the aftermath of a football game at Madison Park High School in Roxbury.

Let’s go straight to the BPD arrest report:

“After turning onto Roxbury Street, officers observed a male suspect brandishing what appeared to be a firearm and yelling in a threatening, menacing manner at several bystanders. Upon seeing the armed suspect, officers immediately unholstered their department-issued firearms and initiated verbal commands instructing the suspect to drop the gun.”

Incredibly enough, Moore, who is all of 20 and comes from Mattapan, refused to drop the gun and began yelling.

Last night, one of those officers, a 10-year veteran of the school police force who asked to remain anonymous, recalled the encounter.

“When you get a call for a suspect … an armed suspect threatening other people, you never think to yourself, or wonder, ‘Hey, is this gun real?’ Hearing that word ‘armed’ automatically takes your adrenaline up many notches,” he said.

“My first thought seeing him was, ‘If this kid doesn’t drop that gun, he could get shot,’” the officer recalled.

But not only did Moore hold on to the gun, he engaged the cops in a wrestling match. No shots were fired and a pistol that looked exactly like their department-issued weapons was taken without any bloodshed. He was arrested and charged with assault by means of a dangerous weapon.

Thank God.

When this cop had time to catch his breath and realize just how close he and this kid “armed” with a very real-looking fake gun came to a tragedy, he described his reaction this way:

“It was a combination of being pissed off and relieved,” he said. “I was obviously relieved that I didn’t have to shoot somebody. And I was pissed off that a 20-year-old kid would be dumb enough to put both himself and us in that kind of situation.”

Yesterday, before a Boston City Council considering an ordinance by the mayor to ban the sale of so-called “replica” guns, Police Commissioner Bill Evans stated the obvious: “These aren’t toys. They can do a lot of damage. The challenge for our officers always is determining what’s a replica and what’s not.”

When replicas are used to rob and intimidate just like real handguns, it’s only a matter of time before that police “restraint” cracks.

“It’s tough enough to do this job as it is, with the prospect of confronting someone with a real gun,” the officer said. “But it becomes a helluva lot harder and more stressful when the gun you’re worrying about is a fake that looks exactly like a real one.”