Longshot

^ I see what you're trying to say, but that's a bit like the government randomly banning porn with the Violence and Porn Reduction Act (VPRA) as a knee jerk response to the public's feeling that people who watch porn are somehow more likely to commit violent crimes and that therefore porn should be banned, only for them to then write a random clause into the Act later saying something like 'it is a defence against prosecution for someone to watch porn if they are watching it to recreate sexual feelings that might otherwise be performed on themselves by a third party,' and then for you, seven years later, to say: "to be honest we should be happy for all this. If it weren't for this we wouldn't be able to have a wank."

Ah, I see your point. Yes, I suppose you could say that just because someone has played for three months is no guarantee they'll ever play again, so why should they get a 'pass' for the following nine months under the UKARA system? I suppose it comes down to the seller's level of comfort in establishing their defence - after all, it's the seller who is breaking the law and facing the potential consequences, not the buyer. To meet the legal requirements by simply checking UKARA is therefore tantamount to saying: 'well, I assumed he was buying it for airsoft since he played airsoft a few times at some point in the last year,' which, when put that way, seems a little weak! After all, you could be selling a RIF to someone who has a UKARA number but hasn't played airsoft in nine months and perhaps never intends to play again, and it's hard to marry that up with the wording of the law. I'd say your far more in-keeping with the law by selling a RIF to a new guy who's never played before but is at your site that day to play a game, technically speaking. Since you can be pretty sure that you are 'providing the RIF for the purposes of airsoft at an airsoft site' (which is the plain English version of the law) in that case, but you really can't be sure of that just because someone gives you a UKARA number. On the other hand, it's a matter of practicalities. If we took the law that way then only face-to-face sales at sites on game days could really count as being worthy of having the defence. That would kill airsoft sales, and therefore probably airsoft. This is the very reason why UKARA was formed and argued for the 'airsoft defence' in the first place, and why the 'UKARA defence' has effectively been accepted by everyone as a result. PS. I love the word "interpenetrated." I'm totally going to find a way to fit that into conversations as work tomorrow!

You're partially right. The law doesn't mention a set number of games or a set amount of time, but also (contrary to popular opinion) doesn't mention 'airsoft,' 'regular' or 'skirmishing' either. If people took the time to actually read the law they'd see how ridiculously vague it actually is. All it actually states (which has then been used to create the 'airsoft defence') is that someone can have a defence against prosecution for selling a RIF if they are providing the RIF: "for the purpose of... the acting out of military or law enforcement scenarios for the purposes of recreation" and that this is taking place in a setting: "for which public liability insurance is held in relation to liabilities to third parties." It literally is as vague as that! So technically nobody needs anything like UKARA or to prove anything about playing 'regularly.' In fact, technically, you don't even have to have played airsoft ever before to be able to provide a defence for the seller. Example: if I have a mate who has never played airsoft before but has signed up at my site to play this Saturday for the first time I can legally sell him a RIF based on the wording of the law (as seen above) and have a defence, since I am confident that I am selling him the RIF 'for the purpose' of playing airsoft at an insured site (which meets those legal requirements).

Qlimax ninja strikes!

A) No. Whoever is over 18 and has played the games in the right time is the one whose details the site will send to UKARA. So yes. If your dad plays the games he can then get on the UKARA database. He could buy a RIF using his UKARA approved details (or by providing another form of defence at the time of buying) after which he can let you borrow it or even just straight up give it to you permanently (but he can't sell it to you until you're 18). Generally speaking retailers who use the UKARA database system say they will only send the RIF being purchased to the name and address that matches the one held on the UKARA database, which is why you can't 'borrow someone's UKARA number' and use it against your name and address. Finally BAC and UKARA are two different systems. Plus who cares about BAC? They made one mistake and now they're burned for life!

What is the best car? My mate told me that a VW Golf with massive alloys is best. Sarcastic point aside, 'best pistol' (as with 'best car') depends on a variety of factors. Are you looking for performance, feel, practicality, ability to accessorise, etc.? As with most things there is only a 'best' in relation to what you're trying to do with it (and also how much you have/want to spend on the gun itself and aftermarket parts).

Jesus Christ! Now goggles are going to get us all killed too! We're doomed!

^ That's very interesting actually. I took a quick look at the site but was still a little confused, could you work out what country that study is from? I was getting Yugoslavia into Serbia? Basing that on the people who carried out the work.

I'll keep the count at 0 since I'm pretty sure he's not blinded or permanently damaged (last I heard at least he was on the road to full recovery). He was the guy I was referring to as having been hit in the eye recently. The irony of his situation (and I've actually heard of this happening a couple of more times myself since the incident) is that his injury was caused as a result of wearing other protection alongside his glasses. Him telling this story has had the positive effect of quite a few people adjusting their lower face masks to be 'outside' their glasses however, thus ensuring nothing will ricochet up and under them, so that's a good thing. At the end of the day, as someone else has said, it's a matter of 'calculated risk,' and the more people who play airsoft over the increasing amount of time that it is played means that the odds of someone eventually losing an eye will constantly increase until it does happen (and wearing full seal will certainly lower your risk of being 'the one' over someone wearing shooting glasses). However, given the literally millions of man hours of play time within airsoft that have already happened, and the fact that nobody seems to know of anyone who has ever 'lost their sight' as a result of playing it wearing shooting glasses, I think that we can say the the risk of losing your eye in airsoft as a result of wearing shooting glasses is still amazingly low. Personally I wouldn't be surprised if the first time we hear of someone losing an eye it's some freak accident in a safe zone or some idiot kid playing in his garden. On the plus side, if you are 'the one' to start the 'I lost my eye at airsoft' trend, eye patches are cool! New loadout:

This seems to be coming up a lot recently (with a lot of people getting very concerned all of a sudden about the dangers of safety glasses and the 'need' to go full seal), so I'm just going to copy and paste what I wrote on another forum: I can't count the amount of times I've heard real stories about people having their eyes blown out, or even just having their eye get caught a little bit and having their sight permanently damaged, all as a result of not wearing full seal glasses. I can't count the amount of times because you don't need to count to get to zero. Sarcasm aside, I've been airsofting for about six or seven years, including working as a marshal for a lot of that, and have never personally seen anyone have a damaged eye or even close to it (seen a lot of lost teeth though). Oh, and I wear ESS Ice with the RX inserts in. I have to admit that the 'gap' on the ESS Ice is larger than I would like with the inserts in. Tightening up the 'sports strap' does help, but having inserts does give an extra few mm of gap. That said, the BB would have to be coming in from a very specific angle to get into the only 'viable' gap that might have a line on my eye, and that would be coming from straight below and in front. I usually wear a lower face mesh mask below them and the way mine sit adds protection in that area (though the guy who got hit in the eye recently - and is fine now - thinks that the one that got his eye his the top of his lower face mask and ricocheted up into his eye). You can see me wearing mine in the first few seconds of this video, and as you can see there is a visible gap (I didn't really have my strap/lanyard on tight for this game, or my lower face mask) however you're very unlikely to be hit directly from the angle at which you would need to be to go straight to your eye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIZI...ature=youtu.be

I can't believe I forgot to post this up here, but some friends of mine have started running their own airsoft games. Here is a video of the first zombie game we ran. Some excellent organisation, very committed zombies, game players and my hammy acting made it an awesome night! It goes to show how much fun airsoft can be when you don't restrict it to everyone trying to be Super Army Soldiers. Enjoy!

For any future articles I write I'll be using this guide:

Theoretically it would matter, since the 'acid test,' so to speak, in defining whether it is a RIF is whether determining whether it was a real gun or an airsoft gun would require someone to closely inspect the gun itself (the assumption being that if it was all bright orange and someone saw you with it they would 'know' it was a non-lethal toy). If adding sights, scopes, torches, etc. adds to its 'realness' then they add to its 'RIFness.' But this is a ridiculous 'test' since nobody walking down the street with an M4 is going to be ignored if the police officer who turns up can see that the M4 is "principally" orange! Anyway, back to the point. It doesn't matter to you (if you are an airsofter) whether it is 51% unrealistically coloured or not since it is not illegal for you to manufacture or own a RIF. If anyone says: "where did you get that?" Tell them it's none of their business. If an officer of the law asks, then tell them where you got it since you've done nothing for which you are not legally 'covered.' So stick all the accessories or whatever you want onto your gun since, as an airsofter who can prove he is an airsofter if required to do so in order to create a defence against prosecution, you are entitled to do what you want with it. As others have said, just don't be a dick with it and nobody will ever know or care.

See this other thread: http://www.airsoft-forums.co.uk/index.php/topic/21317-camouflage-tape/ As gets discussed in that thread there's a 'legal answer' (no matter what age you are you can basically convert IFs into RIFs permanently if you are doing so in order to use them at any airsoft site that has the proper insurance and can show this) and there's a 'safe answer' (in spite of this being the law lots of airsofters are paranoid and think "our sport is constantly under threat! They're watching us all the time!" so they'll get pissy when they see an under 18 with a RIF - even though there's absolutely no law against you having one and no need for you to ever explain to them how/where you got it - and you've also got to realise that the average police officer has no idea about laws surrounding RIFs and is probably more likely to detain and have problems with an under 18 carrying one than an over 18).

The wording of the VCRA is that a gun is an imitation firearm ('two tone') if it's "principal colour is unrealistic." The idea of 51% is therefore derived from the assumption that anything more than half will count as 'principal.' All that said, if you are 'an airsofter' (i.e. you play airsoft at a proper site and could demonstrate this) then you're well within your legal rights to do whatever you want to your gun in whatever colour you want to do it. Get your kicks.

I read a very similar thread to this on another forum just last week. Personally I ordered a load of stuff about a month ago (including sorbo) which just didn't turn up. After a couple of weeks and emails (that were responded to fairly slowly) he told me they must have been lost in the post and offered to resend. I sent him some extra cash for special delivery this time and they turned up a few days later. To his credit a friend of mine had made three orders from him in between all this (including a super expensive and fancy MOSFET) and all of them had turned up in timely fashion. That said, the same friend has ordered some sorbos about two weeks ago and they have not turned up yet! I think one problem is that 'Airlab' is just one guy (who may well also have a 'day job'). If he goes away everything backs up. The other problem is that he just seems to be a bit useless at responding to emails (I had no response at all to any emails I sent before I ordered and afterwards responses once I had issues took days). Lots and lots of people have ordered with Airlab and got good products at a good price, but the overall 'experience' for quite a few of us has not been as professional as might be expected.

Sorry to run on, but I just saw this point. Those things are not required to buy from stores. Also, I've already given an example of when one of the UKARA founding stores sold to people without UKARA membership or site memberships.

Who says it wouldn't stand up in court? It matches the exact wording of the law. UKARA isn't the law, and the court can't just make up a law, they must work within the legal framework, the exact wording of which I quoted above. Look, I'm not saying do it, I'm saying that what the law says (and therefore what a court must work with) and what a lot of people say the law says (which is often essentially just quoting UKARA guidelines) are not the same thing. The more important point is, as I always point out, what a police officer who may question you about your RIF decides to do. Which is why it's always easier to make everyone's life as simple as possible and 'overprotect' yourself.

Technically you don't have to have played a single game at all, since the defence against prosecution for the crime of manufacturing a RIF is merely that you did so: "...for the purpose of making the imitation firearm in question available for" ... "the acting out of military or law enforcement scenarios for the purposes of recreation" in a setting "for which public liability insurance is held in relation to liabilities to third parties arising from or in connection with the organisation and holding of those activities." In other words, if someone said: "why did you make that RIF?" A perfectly acceptable legal answer would be: "to make it available to myself to play airsoft at such and such a site." Of course, you'd have to show that this was actually the case, e.g. through showing a booking, deposit paid, etc. There is also a precedent for this from one of the founding members of UKARA; at a past Ground Zero Weekender (as run by Zeroone) they were selling RIFs to anyone who had paid to attend with no further checks. Presumably they felt legally able to sell to these people, some of whom had never played before, on the basis that they were doing so in the way I have highlighted above.

Next thing you know BAC will start trying to sell wild fruit...

Legally speaking you can paint the whole thing black now if you like (or stick tape all over it permanently), since the defence against prosecution for the manufacture of a RIF is not age specific. To have such a defence you need only show that you manufactured the RIF so that you could use it to play airsoft at a site with third party liability insurance, which is what you seem to be intending to do (and I assume could prove before the game by showing a booking or after the game by showing that you had turned up and played). Then again, and as always, what the law says and how officers of the law understand it and/or carry it out are not always the same thing.

^ This.

I shoot like this, because "most of ya don't know what's goin' on around here, but I'm damn well sure some of you do!"

Where's 'both?'

Our sport is at risks!