Yesterday I went to my airsoft club in London and was shown that the Guardian national newspaper had reported on the plight of Airsoft. Currently the government are thinking of banning airsoft by stopping all airsoft gun sales, a totally knee jerk move to lower crime.

Why is it knee jerk? Well it’s the blurring of the edges between different things. By leaving out part of the facts they are painting an untrue picture. For example:

FACT? Replica’s can kill.
TRUTH: Replica blank firing pistols and previously deactivated real weapons can kill if they are reactivated.

By claiming that replicas can kill the assertion is that airsoft guns can also kill, this is wrong. Airsoft guns cannot kill and cannot be made to kill. The very function of an airsoft gun does nothing similar to a real firearm.

FACT? Airsoft guns are used in crimes.
TRUTH: Airsoft guns are being carried by youths.

The time was when a kid carrying a gun was just a kid with a toy. When I was a child playing cowboys and Indians would not get you shot by the police. Isn’t it simply a matter of education of the people? Are not the statistics relating to gun crime being overblown and the people being mislead? These figures account for many different crimes where a gun like object may have been involved. This includes all the kids stopped and arrested for having a toy springer pistol on them. These are not criminals! They are just kids with toys! People are just getting scared for nothing. Even the police admit that the figures are being misused in the public arena:

Despite the new push to control illegal guns, the police are keen to stress that they are also making parallel efforts to counter the fear of such crime, which is growing, irrespective of the fact that the number of firearms incidents has decreased in many key areas. Gun crime accounts for just 0.4% of all recorded crime across the country. Even in London it accounts for only 0.3% of all recorded offences.

Assistant commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, head of the specialist crime directorate at Scotland Yard, said: “I don’t want to minimise the impact of gun crime but the fear is disproportionate to the reality if you look at all the risk factors. In pockets of London there is a problem but there is a danger that we oversensationalise what is happening and stigmatise certain communities.”

- source Guardian: Lethal replicas fuel gun crime fears

Real gun crime is gang related violence. These people won’t have cheap springer pistols, they won’t have even Tokyo Marui £300 AEG rifles, they will have either real or reactivated guns. They will also totally ignore any laws the government cares to introduce whatever the outcome:

Criminal “Oh! Now my reactivated replica gun is more illegal than before! I must give my life of crime before I get in trouble!”

I can hardly see this happening, but the blurring of the edges of the truth and the playing on people’s fears will make the Blairs look good:

“We solved gun crime!”

They will shout come election day and point to a reduction in gun crime! But in actual fact they have done nothing to stop real crime and only statistical crime! But then, even the home office statistics are clear they will do nothing about real crime:

* There has overall been an increase in the level of gun crime by less than one percent. The number of offences has risen each year since 1997-98, but the 2003-04 rise is the smallest.

* The figures show a decrease of seven percent in the use of handguns from 2002-03.

- source http://www.connected.gov.uk/facts/statistics/

Less than 1 percent. Overall gun crime has gone up less than one percent. But if overall gun crime has not really gone up much, where does the government get the 16% rise from? Of that 1 percent rise, part of attributed to replica firearms, that part has risen. So the question is: risen from what to what? and which part of the 16% rise* is attributed to Blank Firers? Gang violence? Which part actually is directly attributed to airsoft guns? and of that amount, how much was just some kid mucking around with his friends?

What is the actual number of people who have used an airsoft gun directly in a crime? What is the number? Who knows? I don’t, the figures are not anywhere to be found.

Are we not focussing on entirely the wrong problem?. Why? Just so Labour can shout “We solved gun crime!”?

I, for one, don’t think they are above that.

There is a further problem: Minority. Airsoft players, even now in its most popular year, number only thousands. It is not a sport of millions. It is relatively small, easy to blame, and helpless to defend itself? Why? Simply because it can be labelled. Airsofters play a sport that is addictive, fun and full of character. However, from the outside it looks like we are “US style” gun nuts in the grand “Bowling for Colombine” tradition. Is this misinterpretation a good enough reason to focus on us? I play airsoft with various people such as police officers, bankers, millers, builders. Normal people. Very normal and honourable people. Not nuts.

But the government just don’t get playing airsoft. They don’t get gun sport at all.

Dear *******,

I must admit I cannot work out what would be the attraction of using “Airsoft” guns, nor what the sport might be. Do you actually try to hit people with these 6mm BB’s? As the most effective place to hit someone using a real gun is in the head, is there not a danger that someone could lose an eye from such a projectile, ‘airsoft’ or not?

I am not a pacifist, nor do I criticize the use of guns. I deed I am at this moment attached to the British Army as an honorary Lieutenant – Colonel. I have been on the rifle training range, and have even shared the experience of firing 110mm filed guns. The T.A. seems like the correct place to fire any kind of gun. The possibility of someone using a replica gun or misusing even an air gun to cause fear in an innocent citizen must be curbed with whatever measures we can find. The balance of society’s wishes is against the gun owner and user, even if it is only airsoft, if it can be misused.

I know you feel your sport is the one that should be supported. I do not know enough to say whether the guns you use are likely to be abused by unfit or even criminal elements, but if they could then they should be banned. It will be up to the MSP’s to decide in Scotland, but I will be a strict as is necessary to reduce the availability of guns in our society, and I know I have the support of the vast majority of the electorate in Linlithgow and East Falkirk in saying so.

Best wishes,

Michael Connarty MP

-source Saveairsoft.org

Firstly Michael claims to not understand airsoft, but he is very ready to claim that they are being used in crimes. He claims that the “The balance of society’s wishes is against the gun owner and user”. I would simply point out two things:

1. The government still went to war with Iraq when the “balance of society” wished them not to. They seem to have a double standard here. If they don’t “get” the thing in question then they apply the logic. If however they are the only one that gets it, then they do it anyway and to hell with the “balance of society”

2. The government are not allowed to target minorities simply because they want to and they should not inflate the issue in the public eye to make the process of targeting them easier!

Even Mr Clark realises this:

20. Mr Clarke was nevertheless at pains to demonstrate that the Government’s approach to firearms control was a balanced one. While he told us that “the state is entirely justified in assuring itself that firearms are used only in a safe way,” he also believed that

“the state needs a very, very powerful reason to inhibit people pursuing leisure pursuits in a variety of ways which may be seen to be distasteful or difficult in relation to society as a whole. For the state to say ‘You shall not do this because we, the state, decide that you, an individual group, shall not do it’ requires a very powerful reason. Obviously, in the case of firearms that powerful reason could be the issue of safety that may arise. That is why I think the state is entirely justified in assuring itself that firearms are used only in a safe way. . . However, I do not think it is desirable to say that because we do not think this is a nice thing the state should simply say you cannot do this, unless there are . . . very powerful arguments against it. I do not think that a powerful argument has been adduced in the case of many of the aspects of shooting as a recreation with which we are familiar, including the aspects of shooting as a necessity of life in the rural community in some circumstances”.[44]

“I think the key test . . . is safety, and that is the issue. Unless there is a clear safety argument that is adduced to prevent people . . . engaging in either shooting as a sport or shooting in the way of their business . . . then I myself do not think the state should say ‘We simply rule this out’”.[45]

-source Select Committee on Home Affairs Second Report on firearms

We all know that airsoft is safe. It is one of the most safety lead sports in the country. The safety rules are enforced with a fierce doggedness at every airsoft game I have ever been to.

This is government by manipulative dictatorship. The Media are manipulated and the government can forwards their agenda on the back of the public outcry. In any democracy the only thing that keeps the scale balanced is free access to information. In Britain today the information is being fudged, mucked about with and outright lied about in order to deliver one thing: Election Winning Results.

What does any government want? That tomorrow they still are the government.

Finally consider the definition of a replica firearm in the new legislation:

“Something that any reasonable person could mistake for a firearm.”

Presuming that the police themselves constitute reasonable people, then one can take it that chair legs, lighters and even shadows can be mistaken for a firearm. What is a reasonable person? Would a reasonable person rush to judgement on airsoft guns? Wouldn’t a reasonable person not just ban, but look at the real issues behind the statistics? Wouldn’t a reasonable person find out about a subject before damning it?

If someone out there is this mythical “reasonable person” let me know…

…so that I may vote you into power.

Basho

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*note: Some places say the rise is 18% some 16%. Others such as the government talk about the rise of the last two years making a total of 66%, which of course they dont correct people assuming is one years rise. Some places such as the HOUSE OF COMMONS say it is 10%!

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs05/hosb0705.pdf

In the year to December 2004, there were a provisional 11,082 firearm offences, an increase of ten per cent compared with the previous year. This increase is mainly due to offences involving imitation weapons.

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Futher airsoft entries are here: LINKAGE