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Daily Mirror article


Hardley
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Hi All,

 

Has anyone seen the article by Fiona Phillips in todays Daily Mirror about her son & his friend having BB guns & the completely inaccurate info about them firing aluminium BB's & how anyone of any age can buy them without any form of regulation over the internet?

 

Mods/Admin, if this has already been discussed please feel free to delete.

 

Please note I'm not a journo looking for a reply I'm an Airsoft newbie (was due to play my first game 3 weeks ago but managed to badly sprain my ankle the week before!!)

 

Cheers, John

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Unfortunately scaremongering happens, and this is a prime example. Let's just say any thing can be made dangerous, (darts in nerf guns etc).

 

There is already laws/regulation regarding sale of RIF/IF's to under 18's both over the counter and internet etc shows how good a journo she is if she didn't check facts first. That said if a webby dose break the law name and shame or report to the police etc, don't judge every webby by the actions of a few.

 

Another reason I don't read the mirror

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Never trust any news source with 'The intelligent tabloid #madeuthink' as their slogan.

 

Give this dumbass scare mongering journo a good hard slap across the face with a wet kipper and continue on with life.

 

Or a very polite email as a 'correction'. And when I say very polite I mean formal but bitterly insulting.

 

I noticed the mirror has evolved since last time I've seen the wretched thing, It's now a twitter whore as well as an utterly retarded tabloid.

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Actually, she's only half wrong...

http://www.anticsonline.co.uk/1277_1_13972.html

That fires 4.5mm steel BBs and can be bought over the counter at antics or online from probably hundreds of retailers.

but that by law is an airgun isn't it?

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Actually, she's only half wrong...

http://www.anticsonline.co.uk/1277_1_13972.html

That fires 4.5mm steel BBs and can be bought over the counter at antics or online from probably hundreds of retailers.

 

isnt that classed as an airpistol though? which you also need to be over 18 to buy.

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i am sure i read in the VCRA that air rifles/pistols must be bough face to face, they can be ordered over the internet, but you have to go to pick them up .... or words to that effect

 

i may be wrong though, in which case my bad :(

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I think you still have to buy them face to face which will involve ID and being over 18.

The question the journo should be asking is how did her kids get the air pistols.

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I asked once about buying an airsoft pistol from an actual gunsmith woods/ woodys ( I think that's what it was called, over a year ago now), my reply was at it was an air- pistol and could not be brought online or over the phone, but if I got it sent to a gunsmith in my local area I could have it delivered there, provided it was ok with the gunsmith

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Never trust any news source with 'The intelligent tabloid #madeuthink' as their slogan.

 

 

If it was #madeuracist it would be pretty spot on. In case it wasn't clear that is directed at the paper and not you.

 

I have spoken to a few of the guys at work about airsoft and most were under the impression I am talking about airguns firing metal pellets. Then I point out how those can do a lot of damage to a person and airsoft guns fall under a different category altogether. At that point they are quite interested in coming along to see what it is all about :)

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Actually reading it again, I think her 14 year old may have bought a CO2 revolver (Smith and Weston reference) and an AK47, make unknown.

 

She says these can be bought online with no checks which is obviously not true unless it was a retailer breaking the law.

 

The checks and balances are there - now it needs the weight of the law to come down.

 

She should live in some of the rougher parts of the UK where he could probably have got the real thing had he been in the right streetgang.

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What's that? An article in the Daily Mirror/Sun/Star saying that guns are BAD? And children are getting hold of them you say? And what's that? They fire pellets hard enough to kill a small cow at 100 meters? AND THE CHILDREN ARE ROBBING BANKS AND HAVING NAZI-BLOOD-ORGIES WITH THEM?

 

My my, this will never do! SOMEONE CALL THE NEWSPOLICE!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For those of you who are unaware, the gist of the above is that the Mirror are full of s**t. Also, OP, I like you, this is a much more fun post than "what am best gnu" or "what am law". You're alright, you can stay.

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I love how blindly reactionary airsofters can be to things like this.

 

Yes, it was a pointless article, and yes it was a stupid article in as much as she effectively admits both that she is an irresponsible parent and that her son has actually broken the law (surely someone should investigate this...), however: what exactly has she said that isn't true?

 

Her main claims:

  • Air weapons can hurt or kill children = TRUE
  • Air weapons can get children hurt or killed by the police = TRUE
  • Air weapons can be purchased by children in spite of the laws = TRUE

A scaremongering article it may be, but full of falsehoods it is not.

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I really wouldn't take this to heart at all. My neighbor works for the Daily Sport and he's quite open about how these sorts of papers make up the vast majority of their stories or at least exaggerate them to the point where it makes it 'story worthy'.

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Her main claims:

  • Air weapons can hurt or kill children = TRUE
  • Air weapons can get children hurt or killed by the police = TRUE
  • Air weapons can be purchased by children in spite of the laws = TRUE

You couldn't kill a child with an unmodified airgun firing any form of BB, whether steel, ali, glass, plastic, or a bogey.

 

A waterpistol could get a child killed by the police, or walking around minding their own business behind a Brazilian with a wire in his pocket. The problem isn't waterpistols, Brazilians, or BB guns, it's the number of armed police we now have and the willingness of Chief Constables to allow their deployment to ever more categories of potential risk.

 

As can cocaine. The plain fact of the matter is that prohibition and punishment has never, ever, not even once, prevented people from obtaining things they want. My point here is that we know this, or at least, if we feel qualified to speak about law and its impact on society, we ought to. It's not news. It's not specific to airguns. It's not specific to children. It is in fact a non-point from which to hang emotion.

 

I don't need to do any research to know that I am entirely correct when I say that more children have been killed by newspapers than airweapons... perhaps she ought to see if she can start a campaign to make herself unemployed.

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Nonetheless Ian, it is a fact that children have been killed by air weapons (though admittedly the ones I know about are by air rifles, not air pistols, but then I've not looked into it, so I don't know), a fact that air weapons can get kids killed by police (as you've pointed out and as recent events in the US have shown) and that they are not that hard for kids to get their hands on. All the things that she is pointing out.

 

This woman is paid to comment on the news, and recent news about a kid with an air weapon getting killed has led to this particular commentary from her, spurred (unless we take the line that all journalists constantly concoct lies about everything) from a personal experience that is relative.

 

The three complaints people really seem to have against this article are: 1, whether it's relavent (which it is in light of the US shooting), 2, whether she is intentionally saying something that isn't true (I can't see where she is, unless the part about her personal experiences are lies, but that doesn't change the three big truths I've already highlighted that underscore the whole article) and 3, whether she knows what her walls are made out of (I don't really care about this bit!).

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