Is it too easy for under 18s to obtain IFs and RIFs?

[JoW.]

The problem any gun-related object is going to pose is that there is no sane way a civilised society can fully 'normalise' guns into the culture so that people would be comfortable with 'everybody' owning one in the same way 'everybody' can own a car. Even a semi-realistic toy is more capable of looking threatening than a cricket bat, even if the cricket bat would cause more actual damage when used as a weapon. Without an assertive pushing of the positive aspects of gun ownership like knowledge, safety and responsibility (as the US NRA do), the negatives will always prevail (gangster violence, assassinations, civil war atrocities on the news). That is the situation that prevails here, so the general population will only be willing to contemplate guns as a necessary evil for the sporting or countryside maintenance reasons above. To say that you enjoy running around in the woods or in a converted building shooting at people with realistic imitations of live firearms is to invite ridicule or concerns about psychopathy from the general population.

Rationalising airsofters' use of RIFs from the perspective of harm is like talking to a brick wall because our current culture does not allow for a positive view of guns. I do deeply respect the time and effort that was put in to argue the need for a defence against VCR for airsofters, but the model used and accepted by legislators was for martial arts clubs, equating the airsoft gun with martial arts training weapons. My preference would have been modelling airsoft as re-enactment (we were in contact with Vietnam re-enactors using airsoft XM177s alongside M16 blank firers at Kirby Hall back when Kirby Hall multi-period re-enactment was still being run by English Heritage) or as a form of LARP. To me, an airsoft gun is no more harmful as a weapon as a LARP hammer, and much less so than firearms held by WW2 re-enactors or steel combat blunts in medieval re-enactment. The burden of qualifying as a re-enactor or LARPer is much less than qualifying as a member of a sporting organisation, and would have been less restrictive in terms of getting potential airsofters the airsoft guns they need.

Coincidentally, when you are trying to qualify for a Firearms Certificate, it is always helpful to avoid the use of the word weapon whenever referring to a firearm. So you see, the same cultural imperatives apply whether trying to acquire live firearms or airsoft replicas.

 

[Joshiye]

I agree with much of your last, but I think I'd be far happier if the genpop understood what we do as a game and that our "guns" are actually toys, or that we could talk about them as 'sporting equipment' without any connection to 'country sports'. I mean a cricket ball could have your eye out, a hockey puck will often leave a decent bruise, various clubs, bats, sticks, etc. can be and are lethal to adults nevermind children...

I actually remember on the news someone got killed by a cricket ball, hit in the temple

 

[TacMaster]

If cricket can directly result in death when airsoft can't (technically death by armed police is indirect) then by the VCRA's logic, the sale of cricket equipment should be closely controlled, and anyone who doesn't have a UKCRA registration needs to have their bats painted a bright colour by retailers, so passers by are warned of the presence of high velocity cricket balls by a bright orange length of wood.

 

[Ian_Gere]

I take your point, JoW., however Switzerland seems pretty sane and it's the law there that every male keeps a rifle. Gun ownership per capita in Canada is way higher than in the USA, yet gun related deaths and specifically murder rates are way lower. The number of murders per capita per year is an order of magnitude higher in the USA than any other country which has a functional government able to keep the requisite records. The same stat for the UK is pretty high also, I'm not certain but I think the highest in Europe.

My point here is that there do appear to be "sane way a civilised society can fully 'normalise' guns into the culture so that people [are] comfortable with 'everybody' owning one in the same way 'everybody' can own a car [the ownership and use of which is subject to taxation, education, legal status, insurance, etc]." The question then becomes 'what is so insane about the USA and UK that not merely actual firearms cannot be normalised, but neither can toys which resemble them, even though they are less dangerous than than the majority of sports equipment which is normalised...?'

If we want the genpop to accept our hobby/sport and its equipment, we must sever the perceived link between airsoft guns designed to shoot plastic BB's and air weapons designed to fire metal BB's or firearms. One obvious way to start this process is to stop referring to them as "guns". A paintball 'gun' is a "marker". What about 'tagger' for our equipment?

 

[Esoterick]

If we want the genpop to accept our hobby/sport and its equipment, we must sever the perceived link between airsoft guns designed to shoot plastic BB's and air weapons designed to fire metal BB's or firearms. One obvious way to start this process is to stop referring to them as "guns". A paintball 'gun' is a "marker". What about 'tagger' for our equipment?

I always thought this was a bit disingenuous to it's actual purpose. It makes me think of a felt tip pen or a label machine. Hopefully knowledge and not wording is the key to people understanding what airsoft is really about. Perhaps this is what it has come to when a lot of recent laws passed feel like MPs thinking snapping their fingers and creating a new law will resolve a perceived problem?

Gun crime, realistically is a complex social issue. Switzerland for instance has a notoriously high gun ownership level whilst maintaining a low level of gun crime.

Also out of interest are paintball guns that would constitute what we would call RIFs harder to obtain that airsoft guns?

 

[sp00n]

One obvious way to start this process is to stop referring to them as "guns". A paintball 'gun' is a "marker". What about 'tagger' for our equipment?

How about "Hit'er" .... oooh wait :wacko: :blink:

while i do like this idea, the problem we have is we have too diverse a selection of wepons/guns etc to band all of them under one name

 

[JoW.]

I was never in contact directly with the powers that be so I never really understood the rationale behind why airsofters had to represent themselves to genpop politicians as martial arts club members. All respect to the guys who got the defence written in against what seemed (at times) to be the most pigheaded and obtuse set of political interests who were on the upper hand, as it must have taken nerves of steel and the patience of a parent handling 20 screaming toddlers in a room at 4am. Given the high status of re-enactment at the time, and the long established presence of large LARPs which are socially accepted and (more importantly) considered harmless, I argued at the time that airsoft was more properly aligned with those two things than with martial arts. However, I think there was a stronger desire on the part of airsofters generally to distinguish themselves from the 'underage kids with single shot M4s shooting each other in the back garden' and to be taken seriously, hence martial arts sports club angle. Sites felt it would help to boost their business by making attendance mandatory and retailers hoped that fear of Customs confiscations would help stop direct imports from the UK.

Ultimately, though, it was always going to result in airsoft being whittled down from the open community with high levels of intake (and churn) to a much more closed off, club based activity. The reason I don't think this worked to the advantage of airsoft is because, unlike martial arts or shooting, airsofting isn't really a skill you learn where the result is some form of self improvement, but something you do together with lots of other people to have fun (like LARP). Cutting out the casual entrants has just made airsoft a less appealing activity in comparison to other socially based leisure activities where you don't necessarily have to go through mandatory attendance sessions to be part of the community.

In Switzerland, all males over a certain age receive military training and are then liable for reservist duty (and annual camp) until they reach a certain age. They have normalised firearms by providing nationwide training on military firearms and requiring military service. The weird Swiss paranoia about defence and separateness is what makes the Swiss strange in other ways. In Canada, hunting is normalised, and firearms are seen as a tool for hunting, which is why sporting firearms ownership is acceptable, but ownership of firearms or guns that look like assault rifles is not. In Canada, the path towards owning a sporting firearm is far easier than trying to acquire an airsoft gun, with the result that Canadian airsofters are often making the same arguments vis-a-vis the actual harm inflicted by an airsoft gun vs a baseball bat which fall on equally deaf ears.

Incidentally, in Denmark, large groups of people play the assassination game which people voluntarily sign up to. You get a name and you have to find this person in real life. You track them for a while in their real lives, and then you have to find a good moment to 'assassinate' them with a realistic imitation weapon (rubber knife or single shot airsoft pistol). They may, in turn, go to work or wherever armed with a similar realistic imitation weapon to fight you off.

 

[TacMaster]

Ownership of weapons in Switzerland is more than normalised- the Swiss public have an extremely casual attitude to them! I was in Geneva in February and one of the most lasting memories of that trip was seeing a group of Swiss army personnel casually walking down a street from the train station with loaded Sig assault rifles slung behind them- the other people on the pavement didn't even bat an eyelid!

Granted, that may have been a very normal thing to happen in Switzerland, but if the MoD allowed serving members of our armed forces to do the same here, there would be a completely different reaction.