This post was pub­lished over 700 days ago and there­fore may not rep­res­ent cur­rent Out­side Con­text think­ing or opin­ion. Please, do not let that detract from your enjoy­ment of it!

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

——————–
*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

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