How come you aren't allowed to spray a gun but allowed to own a RIF?

[Longshot]

But it does highlight one point and that is if we as active skirmishes have difficulty with the law...

As I believe has been pointed out by a couple of people within this thread, the reason airsofters 'have difficulty with the law' is often because they haven't actually read the bloody thing and have just repeated what someone else who hasn't read it told them (after that person heard it from someone else who hadn't read it as well).