I think it is even simpler:

Consider:

use strict;

use Scalar::Util qw(weaken isweak);
my $a = [];

my $r1 = $a;
my $r2 = $a;

weaken $r1;

print "a is weak\n" if isweak $a;
print "r1 is weak\n" if isweak $r1;
print "r2 is weak\n" if isweak $r2;
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So here we have a array_ref $a of which we make two further copies for which we prove again that they are different.

So to answer your initial question:

Given a reference you simple assign it to a scalar to get another reference to the same referent - no need for special syntax or type-glob fiddling...