Outside Context

Office of Hazel Blears MP
Min­is­ter of State
Home Office
50 Queen Anne’s Gate
Lon­don SW1H 9AT

Dear Mrs Blears,

I am writ­ing to you today in response to the announced plans out­lined in the Viol­ent Crime Reduc­tion Bill and spe­cific­ally the sec­tions con­cern­ing the avail­ab­il­ity of rep­lica firearms.

Viol­ent gun crime is now an unfor­tu­nate ever present fear. The media reg­u­larly pounce on any occur­rences of gun crime and the pic­ture painted is that guns are every­where and moreover the police (being unarmed) are in need of help in deal­ing with the issue. How­ever, one only has to read stat­ist­ical art­icles pub­lished by the Home Office1 and com­pare those to the lan­guage and images con­jured in the main­stream press to see that the per­ceived fear does not match the actual threat. The home office web­site shows that the vast major­ity of gun crime is con­cen­trated in the gang areas of our major cit­ies and not amok around the coun­try as a whole. It would appear then that the most coher­ent strategy’s is dir­ectly com­bat­ing these gangs and thus redu­cing the gun stat­ist­ics, as well as crime levels as a whole. The real­ity is that simple reduc­tion in guns does little to curb crime. For example, Japan has for many years held one of the low­est gun crime rates and this has been attrib­uted to the simple low own­er­ship of guns by the pub­lic. I invite you to read the very illu­min­at­ing art­icle by the dir­ector of the Fire­arms Research Pro­ject of Colorado2 that shows very clearly that the Japan­ese essen­tially live in a police state, which would be unten­able here in the west and it is this that leads to low crime not gun con­trol per say. The simple fact is that here in the west gun crime is very much in the hands of organ­ised crim­in­als I.E. people out­side the con­trol of any legal legis­la­tion in the first place.

On the other hand there are rep­lica and air powered guns. The most obvi­ous reason that rep­licas fire­arms are a con­cern is that they look like a real fire­arm. They are in fact func­tion­ally harm­less, but the feel­ing is that people with these rep­licas may use them to threaten and ter­ror­ize and that the police can­not eas­ily tell them from real steel guns3. All people would agree that chil­dren should not be in pos­ses­sion of fire­arms of any kind out­side strict adult con­trol and it is clear that the pro­posed bill will go some way to address­ing this. The Bill should also put pay to the cheap spring powered plastic rep­licas avail­able at mar­kets and drastic­ally reduce the num­ber of these “toys” in the hands of children.

How­ever, there are ser­i­ous prob­lems with it and I am writ­ing to ask for you to pres­sure for an excep­tion to be made. Air­soft is a type of air gun that shoots a 6mm or 8mm light plastic balls (usu­ally .25 of a gram). These guns are gen­er­ally gas, spring or bat­tery powered and are clas­si­fied as hav­ing under a 1 joule velo­city. This is the velo­city under which even a dir­ect shot into the eye will not res­ult in per­man­ent dam­age (see the Select Com­mit­tee on Home Affairs Second Report on firearms4). The prob­lem with the Bill in its cur­rent form lay in the fact that it will also pre­vent respons­ible adults from enjoy­ing the sports asso­ci­ated with air­soft guns. That is people like myself who are involved in the sport of air­soft tar­get shoot­ing or skir­mish­ing. Skir­mish­ing air­soft is very sim­ilar to paint ball but simply without the paint. I have been play­ing air­soft for many years and now reg­u­larly attend a club in the cen­ter of Lon­don where along with around 50 oth­ers play tac­tical games of skill and team­work in a safe and mon­itored envir­on­ment. The people who play this sport are from all walks of life. I myself work for a City of Lon­don mer­chant bank and there are all sorts of other pro­fes­sion­als such as build­ers, millers, and even a few police officers who reg­u­larly meet up and play. Under this ban this sport will quickly die and live­li­hoods built around the sport will suf­fer. It appears very unfair to my thou­sands of fel­lows around the coun­try, who per­fectly sens­ibly and safely play, that their sport is being closed out in the illu­sion that it will actu­ally help pre­vent crime in any real sense5.

Air­soft guns are gen­er­ally made of plastic and it is not pos­sible to con­vert one to fire live ammuni­tion. They are func­tion­ally harm­less. The prob­lem is only one of how they look and their avail­ab­il­ity in unli­censed and unreg­u­lated stores such as mar­ket stalls. I ask you to con­sider an ana­logy to fen­cing. Remem­ber back a few years to before the media became fix­ated on rep­lica guns. Then they were more focused on swords. Samurai style swords were and still are read­ily avail­able to buy in this coun­try. The ana­logy is to ban­ning the sale of fen­cing foils in order to reduce the per­ceived sword crime fig­ures. Fen­cing foils look like swords, they act like swords, their own­ers would be in ser­i­ous trouble if they ter­ror­ized the pub­lic with them, and the police have a hard time telling one apart from a real sword in an emer­gency. They are, how­ever, harm­less. Just as air­soft guns are harm­less. Would the gov­ern­ment faced with rising sword crime ban the sale of fen­cing foils? No. They would simply ask the fen­cing com­munity to make sure that the foils are cap­able to being told apart from real swords. This is the com­prom­ise that is needed to save my sport.

In the US air­soft guns are made with bright orange paint on the tips of their bar­rels. These tips are required on all impor­ted or expor­ted guns, are a crime to remove, and required for a valid war­ranty. I am ask­ing that the gov­ern­ment look at hav­ing the same require­ments for UK air­soft player’s guns coupled with licens­ing for their import­a­tion. licens­ing shops and web­sites selling air­soft guns in the UK would imme­di­ately stop their sale at mar­kets to the under­age, drastic­ally reduce the num­bers in the hands of chil­dren and teen­agers, but at the same time allow those of us who play respons­ibly to con­tinue to do so. Be sure that whilst air­soft is not itself being dir­ectly banned, the ban­ning of buy­ing new guns will kill this fairly new but pop­u­lar sport.

This com­prom­ise will stop the mar­ket stalls and cheap guns in the hands of chil­dren, while at the same time mak­ing the cor­rect judg­ment that air­soft is a viable sport played by adults in a safe man­ner, just like fen­cing. Just like rugby. Just like hockey.

The air­soft com­munity led by the retail­ers is more than will­ing to work with the government6. Please pres­sure the gov­ern­ment to work with the air­soft community7, we will listen and we are ded­ic­ated to being responsible.

Many thanks for read­ing my communication.

Yours faith­fully,

James Bell

I have also a num­ber of footnotes:

1.http://www.connected.gov.uk/facts/statistics/index.html
2.http://www.guncite.com/journals/dkjgc.html
3.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4072244.stm
4.http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmhaff/95/9504.htm
5.http://www.civitas.org.uk/pubs/respect.php
6.http://saveairsoft.org/
7.While air­soft has no offi­cial gov­ern­ing body, many play­ers are con­greg­ated around web for­ums such as http://www.airsoftcommunity.co.uk/forums/ and http://www.arniesairsoft.co.uk/forums/