typefish

The only place where we get the e-mails from is from the UKAPU site. You therefore have an account with us. Send me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll be more than happy to pass across to you details as to when you had registered with us.

Both UKARA and UKAPU do the behind the scenes stuff.

I wouldn't joke about that, as when shit has hit the fan, it's the brand ambassadors and content creators (which does include journalists) with actual reach that can help throw something important into the public eye that on the face of it, most people would not care about, even if to those in the know it is scary.

Since the topic has migrated over to national governing bodies, I feel that I can safely return to this thread! As someone who has spent a lot of time looking into this over the past seven years, I feel confident in saying that the main issue to do with national governing bodies, as I'm sure you may be aware, is money. There is a rather disappointing reason why bodies such as the NABV, an organisation that was set up by a team of skirmishers and sites at the insistence of the Dutch Government, are needing to charge approximately £62 a year in order to allow skirmishers to be considered to play airsoft, and that reason is liability. But first, the numbers: whilst we don't have any up to date numbers on how many active skirmishers that there are in the UK, the number that we've been officially floating has been about 60,000. If that number represents actual skirmishers, that would suggest that £5 would bring in £300k per annum and £50 (if we normalised the numbers a bit) would bring in just shy of £2 million per annum. I don't believe that anywhere near that amount of money would be brought in, nor do I believe that sites in the UK would, excepting some massive disastrous push from a future Government where airsoft skirmishers were restricted to allowing those that were fully paid up, formal members of some sort of registered organisation (which I hope organisations such as UKAPU would aggressively campaign against) Now, to the concept of liability: anything that a governing body issues as advice, is issued in the name of the body and as such it is the body carries the liability. I had no problem with helping those with import issues with their queries, because if we as an organisation ended up offering duff advice, then an organisation such as UKAPU (or more accurately, it's executive committee as was correctly pointed out upthread) would not have much in terms of exposure. On the scale of a purchasing a replacement RIF I would suggest, but we've never had to do that thankfully. However, when questions are raised like health and safety (read: eye protection) or how to deal with errand players deliberately and seriously injuring other players during game play, you may end up in the realm of some quite rather expensive personal injury claims being pointed in the direction of the body who issued those guidances. Not just through sites working to best practices of a particular governing body, but manufacturers wishing to understand which specification they need to build their personal protection equipment towards, retailers understanding what goods they can sell without encountering liability etc. At present, liability falls almost solely on site owners, backed by their public liability insurance. Waivers, as much as people wish they waive all liability, still leave the site owners with a fair amount of exposure. Now, how do we get around the issue of liability, one asks? An organisation could issue guidance with a waiver of liability however the outcome of obtaining legal advice was that not only would that be seen as unprofessional from an organisation issuing such guidances, but any waiver of liability would be... not worth much in a court. So, the realistic answer is to purchase insurance. I'm not in the position to discuss exactly how much I personally was quoted per annum however I hope you can tell how disappointed I was when I found it out that it was a five figure sum. It could have been purchased, but it was not the best use of money. There's also the elephant in the room that is "I won't do what you tell me" which... is a topic for another day! Note 1: what is being posted below is my personal opinion. It is not the opinion of UKAPU and therefore should not be interpreted as such. Note 2: the linked High Court case is referring to a case where one rugby player had been involved with a dangerous tackle and caused paralysis to a second rugby player. Whilst it was found that the defendant (the rugby player who initiated the dangerous tackle) was liable, it was ultimately brought to determine whether or not the insurance policy that covered the defendant (arranged by the NGB) had to pay out.

It would be timely if it was, however please be assured that it was purely coincidental. Standing down has been something that has been on my mind for the past year or so, I just never decided to actually do it up until about 4 weeks ago. I wish I had done it sooner, judging by some of the interesting comments in this thread! The minutes are for me to type up they'll be ready by tomorrow I think - never fun doing a committee meeting followed up by a day's skirmishing. Anyhow an update will be provided by a member of the team in this very thread along with other media streams in due course (as in, very shortly!) - I can't say too much about that now as I'm no longer the chairman! 🙂 No, the wholly unprofessional response reference was due to me highlighting the fact that the resignation was brought on with regards to personal health reasons, partly brought on by the whole airsoft thing shutting down thing during the pandemic. If you chose to interpret that in a different manner, then that is understandable. This will be the last time I reply to this topic as personally I'm baffled as to why there's such discontent about what is strictly an internal meeting, discussing things that are internal and sensitive in nature. It is something that the committee is entitled to do, and in some instances, is required to do.

Both the admin assistant and the website developer are, as I understand it are paid for their time from shared UKARA funds, which are directly contributed from the fee that retailers pay for access to the UKARA system. I don't believe that money is abstracted from the running of UKARA for anything other than operating expenses and it ultimately is pooled, which is understandable considering how expensive it is to engage in legal proceedings or to provide scientific evidence that can be used when discussing and countering legislation. Whilst harsh, it's definitely true. The nature of volunteering is that it's done in one's spare time, or referring back to some of our past hijinks, pulling all nighters.

Yes, that is correct. I want to hand over the reins in an orderly manner, and the best way to do that is to gather members of our committee and elect a new chairperson ASAP. From that point we would proceed onwards to regularising whatever the committee and wider membership decide to vote for at the AGM.

In agree with that last sentence, however if I were a betting person, I would say that it would have been the intention of parliament to say that the word "firearm" within the Highways Act is something that is to be interpreted as described within the Firearms Acts.

Hello. Just thought I'd post in this topic just to clear up a couple of comments here. The meeting that has been previously announced here that is being held on the 22nd of this month is not an AGM, it is an emergency management meeting, which is being held to replace myself as chairman, as I'm resigning. Once that emergency meeting has occurred, and a new chairperson elected, we will begin the process of organising, and notifying our members about an upcoming AGM. I won't go into details in full as to why I'm resigning on here (as I'll leave that to a press release to be done at a later date) but essentially dealing with the absolute mess that was the Coronavirus regulations pretty much made me want to pack airsoft in all together (and I want to enjoy airsoft once again) I thank you for your interest in UKAPU and I hope to possibly see you at the AGM, whenever that may be!

To add to this, I haven't heard of any legitimate importation of RIFs going as far as needing discussion at a magistrates court, normally when someone with a bit of knowledge within BF confirms the defence (either UKARA or a skirmisher's diary) it's released. If anyone knows of anything that has gone that far however, I'd be interested in hearing more about it!

From what I've been hearing back from people who have personally imported their RIFs into the UK (or in a shipping container), generally it's a trouble free experience. Generally the issue is only when it's sent as a parcel.

My builds are about 22-27rps But that's mostly because I quite like them set up like that for stupidly quick trigger response when I'm playing CQB It's always the M4 pistols, isn't it 😂

The problem isn't about people not being able to wait two weeks to play again. Honestly, I'm baffled about today's absolutely bizarre outpouring of emotion. The actual problem is more that pre-Covid, universities were struggling to set up their student unions due to airsoft, that is for all intents and purposes a sport - is not seen as a sport due to a lack of a governing body. In one instance, someone thought some random retailer was the governing body, based on the name "airsoft" followed by the initials for "governing body" Edit: and it doesn't even need to be recognised. It just needs to be a thing

Following on from this, there is very little difference between 1J and 1.13J - an estimate of a couple of metres or so, give or take some fairy dust being liberally sprinkled around the hop unit. However not too long ago we as a community spent a considerable amount of time and effort (and the case of the retailers, their money) in proving to the Government (and others) that what we hold to be common practice is indeed safe. And it makes no sense to throw that away 🤷‍♂️

Sorry, I didn't see your message I'm the chairman ☺️