Templar Mike

Colonel Kurtz and AJWest have both made some excellent points here. The only thing I would add is you need to be careful, when using any object to defend yourself, about showing any signs of prior intent. For example if you have a RIF under your bed and bluff someone, but tell the police you had it under your bed "in case you needed to defend yourself", you're showing prior intent to cause harm and/or fear. You open yourself up to a whole world of potential problems there, and that goes for anything. Weapons of opportune are, as Kurtz and AJWest have said, perfectly acceptable so long as you can justify their use and that you genuinely felt that your personal safety was in jeopardy. To answer the original question, not sure I would use a RIF to defend myself, unless it was to hand and I had no other options, in which case I'd use it as a club rather than trying to pretend it was real. But I can;t see any circumstances where that situation would arise to be honest.

New to the forum, but I work in the security industry so thought I'd give my 2 pence. I haven't seen it mentioned in my skimming of this thread but one thing people seem to be missing is intent. If you show any prior intent to cause harm to someone the chances of you falling foul of the law are greatly increased, regardless of what you use. If we're talking about grabbing a RIF because your crapping your pants while someone breaks in, then you'll likely be fine. It's the difference between specifically having an item available to mess someone up who breaks into your house, or just grabbing something to hand because it was there and you thought it would scare them off. Having said that, given the limited amount of damage an airsoft gun can do, I'd say you're unlikely to face criminal charges, but as someone else has said, and more importantly, you could be putting your own life in danger!

New to the forum. Names Mike and I run Templar Airsoft. Have been recommended this forum by the Sinister 616 lads.