Another ball bearing airgun incident.

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scalawag

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Sadly another reported incident where a ball bearing airgun that looks like a real firearm has been involved in an incident, this time in my neck of the woods down in Sussex.  Police used a baton round to take this fool down.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-43004040

I hope the idiots out there behave themselves, as this is the second incident involving this type of gun in just over a week that has made it into the press.  Too much bad publicity in a short space of time and whilst not directly airsoft related could still lead to problems if the cause is taken up by the wrong people.

 
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Peoples' views on guns in the UK are already negative as it is. I hope these sorts of incidents won't effect our community in any way. 

 
Another muppet on the street, helping to reinforce the view and giving our sport/hobby a bad reputation.. 

As a sporting shooter of all guns, RS, Airguns and Airsoft,  things like this really disappointing and annoying to me, as I'm sure it is to you all as well, I do strongly believe it's only a matter of time before Airguns and Airsoft are licensed in the UK, which in some cases is not entirely a bad thing, but unfortunately even if they are it will not spot muppets like this running around the streets with airsoft and airguns.. 

Happy and safe shooting all. 

ATB Marc 

 
That's a peculiar resolution.  If they thought it was a real firearm, they've had slotted him good and proper. If they knew it was a pewpew toy, they could have walked right up and tasered or PAVAd him.  A baton round is neither fish nor fowl.

For what it's worth, I'd rather that they split his wig and decreased the surplus population.

 
Rogerborg said:
That's a peculiar resolution.  If they thought it was a real firearm, they've had slotted him good and proper. If they knew it was a pewpew toy, they could have walked right up and tasered or PAVAd him.  A baton round is neither fish nor fowl.

For what it's worth, I'd rather that they split his wig and decreased the surplus population.
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Not a peculiar resolution at all. It’s what the baton gun is deployed for. 

It’s a less lethal option that can be fired earlier than a conventional firearm (say the gunman is holding the gun pointing at the ground or it’s in his belt) and hopefully break a chain of events so twats don’t get shot.

No doubt had the baton round been ineffective or one of the armed officers perceived an immediate threat to life the situation would have ended differently.

Taser, PAVA and CS are close in weapons regardless of what the manufacturer would have everyone believe. 

CBH

 
Rogerborg said:
That's a peculiar resolution.  If they thought it was a real firearm, they've had slotted him good and proper. If they knew it was a pewpew toy, they could have walked right up and tasered or PAVAd him.  A baton round is neither fish nor fowl.

For what it's worth, I'd rather that they split his wig and decreased the surplus population.
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Yeah the article also states he had a taser device of some kind on him so I suspect that was at least partly the reason for the baton round. Sadly though, as usual, the taser or whatever it was he had gets second billing to the "firearm" and so what the public hear is that the gun he had was so dangerous that the police had to use violence to bring him down.  Not good all round really.

update

Just for the sake of accuracy the article actually uses the term stun gun and not taser to describe the other item this moron had on him, but the report is headlined as a "hand gun incident"

 
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It’s annoying that airsoft is attacked from time to time. People don’t even realise the amount of real firearms you can obtain in the uk.

if people realised what you can have as a real gun airsoft hate might go on the back burner.

for example you can have a pistol, as long as it has a 16 inch barrel and 24 inches of overall length it’s legal. You can have a ar15 cambered in .223 as long as it’s manual action and you can have a 50bmg bolt action rifle. 

But its these 350fps plastic toys that banning 

 
Hang on... was airsoft attacked in this article? I know there's the "ball bearing gun" thing but it's not really much of an article at all, nevermind inflammatory or fear-mongering.

 
I wish more Gun shops would do the same as ours to stop the Dick heads from buying so easily. For Airsoft we follow the "Prove a defence rule as do most legit Airsoft retailors, but for Air Weapons we go above and beyond what the law requires of us. You can only buy one of these weapons off us if you have photo I.D with proof of address which we record on every sale. This can only be a photo driving licence or passport with recent utility bill or other official I.D. We figure that if you are a legitimate buyer, then you will not have a problem in producing this. If you do then alarm bells start ringing and we think "Does this person have something to hide?" We have upset a few customers that were not happy with our policy and one even left a negative review on Google for us stating that he went to another local Gun shop without any of this hassle. Legally All a prospective customer needs to do is prove that they are over 18 and give (not prove) their address, which in our opinion as well as the Police, is open to abuse.

            A lot of Gun shops just want to get the sale, no matter who buys it. We have had on quite a few occasions, people try to buy an Air Pistol or Rifle, when we have asked them for this I.D they have quite openly said they have a firearms ban, not long come out of prison, want to shoot a neighbour and all sorts of things. We want to protect our trade as well of making a living of course. Opinions on this? 

 
TARGETSZONE.CO.UK said:
I wish more Gun shops would do the same as ours to stop the Dick heads from buying so easily. For Airsoft we follow the "Prove a defence rule as do most legit Airsoft retailors, but for Air Weapons we go above and beyond what the law requires of us. You can only buy one of these weapons off us if you have photo I.D with proof of address which we record on every sale. This can only be a photo driving licence or passport with recent utility bill or other official I.D. We figure that if you are a legitimate buyer, then you will not have a problem in producing this. If you do then alarm bells start ringing and we think "Does this person have something to hide?" We have upset a few customers that were not happy with our policy and one even left a negative review on Google for us stating that he went to another local Gun shop without any of this hassle. Legally All a prospective customer needs to do is prove that they are over 18 and give (not prove) their address, which in our opinion as well as the Police, is open to abuse.

            A lot of Gun shops just want to get the sale, no matter who buys it. We have had on quite a few occasions, people try to buy an Air Pistol or Rifle, when we have asked them for this I.D they have quite openly said they have a firearms ban, not long come out of prison, want to shoot a neighbour and all sorts of things. We want to protect our trade as well of making a living of course. Opinions on this? 
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What's to stop a criminal from providing all the required information, buying a gun then committing a crime? 

Either way I think it's a noble idea, but unfortunately won't prevent the muppets from buying guns if they really want one. 

As you said yourself, in the end the customer just went to another store.

Perhaps if more stores requested more information then it would have more of an effect. I don't know, I have no statistics to back any of this up. Just my 2 cents. 

 
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I agree, you won't stop all of them, but it does make life a little more difficult for them and in a lot of cases does prevent, because a lot of the time, they can't be bothered to keep shopping around drawing attention to themselves if they are planning to commit a crime, also it helps prevent bad publicity to the retailer. We are in a Marmite trade. "Love it or hate it" The Police do come and visit us from time to time and ask us if, we have sold to anyone suspicious, we also have an inspection every 3 years to renew our RFD (registered firearms dealer) We have only had one inspection for renewal 2 years ago, and were praised for our efforts, where other dealers in our area were criticised, and the Police are just waiting for them to trip up, so they can revoke their License. Therefore, bad for them but good for us. we would get more trade and still be able to filter out most of the "wrong uns" Just feel if others followed suit it would protect their trade and would help to prevent (Not stop) crime and safeguard shooting of Airsoft, Air weapons etc.. Had it not been for Frank Bottomley and the guys behind UKARA Airsoft may not be the enormous growing activity that it is today, as it was definitely frowned upon by Parliament. Your details are recorded on a database that can be accessed at anytime. this should surely be the case for air weapons, not just give a name and address without being able to prove it. At the end of the day, an airsoft gun used in crime looks frightening, if used it will hurt, burst an eyeball, chip a tooth yet the law is stringent. A .22 air rifle however can and will Kill, but is easier to buy?? www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-42919/Boy-14-dies-air-rifle-shooting.html

Thanks for your input


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TARGETSZONE.CO.UK said:
At the end of the day, an airsoft gun used in crime looks frightening, if used it will hurt, burst an eyeball, chip a tooth yet the law is stringent. A .22 air rifle however can and will Kill, but is easier to buy??
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This is exactly what I thought when I read all this.

IMO, what you are doing with the proving address is better than the current airgun laws.

We just need all shops to do it for it to truly be effective.

 
LightningCh said:
This is exactly what I thought when I read all this.

IMO, what you are doing with the proving address is better than the current airgun laws.

We just need all shops to do it for it to truly be effective.
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Agreed, both of my local Rfd do the same, they want photographic id and proof of address, and I have been many times while they turn customers away for not providing it and for other reasons too, which in some cases does not go down well with some people, I have seen them turn people away when just looking a bit shady or for people even talking  inappropriately, one time two chaps come in and was talking to each other about buying Airguns saying, yes we will buy this buy that then go have some fun shooting in the woods, this was enough for my local RFD to say nope we are not selling you nothing. They are also extra careful because they are a proper RFD thay sell RS. 

Unfortunately you can do all the checks, and even licence every gun, or ban every gun, you will not stop muppets from being irresponsible, you can only lower it slightly, to be honest I have also see plenty of irresponsible airsofters that for just their attitude would be turned away, but as always though its the law abiding citizens that get affected and suffer mostly.. 

But us responsible shooters no matter the shooting sport, hobby or disciplines we need to stick together and help make our sport/hobby better.. :)

Happy shooting all. 

ATB Marc 

 
TARGETSZONE.CO.UK said:
A .22 air rifle however can and will Kill, but is easier to buy?
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Except in Scotchland, where you "need" a licence.

But you can get a licence, unlike with airsoft where it's guilty-until-proven-innocent on a case-by-case basis.

However, if you really wanted to off someone, you could go and buy a compound crossbow and put a broadhead clean through them, without any questions asked.

The whole area of projectile licensing is a big contradictory mess and could really do with being rationalised.

 
I get what you mean, but I am pretty sure anything that has an age limit flags up on these machines for a supervisor to assess and confirm the customer is legit. And if they were to steel it, it would set off the alarm as it is tagged. Not failsafe but again preventative. I think doing something, is better than doing nothing, with any such item, but I get your point more people get deliberately run over, than shot or stabbed, as we have seen on the news with terrorist attacks, not to mention domestic cases, drink related cases etc.. 

 
Agreed, Just want to protect our trade, protect the Airsoft/shooting community. Doing Something is better than doing nothing, helps if the people of this world who don't understand us and point blame, at least we can say hang on a minute we have done all we can to prevent the dickheads of this world. I agree if somebody is mind set on killing or maiming they will do it with whatever, but at least the critics cannot say that we are complacent with crime, and are doing something

 
I remember only to well when all the proper pistol shooters in the country lost the right to own and shoot their target and collector pistols due to the action of one mad individual, the government and police would love to deprive air softers of the right to RIF.

The same now as then legal owners will get deprived while the criminal element still find it easy to obtain weapons, just check how many deaths in the last year shocking.

 
gasman said:
the government [...] would love to deprive air softers of the right to RIF.
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What's stopping them?  They did prevent it in 2006, by banning the sale of RIFs without a defence for airsoft use.  They then amended that in 2007 to give a defence.

Granted, things change, but they'd have to admit that they were wrong then in order to push us off the ledge again.

 
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