On Wednesday the 13th July the IMCO committee will vote on the proposal 2015/0269 to amend the European firearms directive. Allot of work has been done by airsoft players, the airsoft industry and airsoft groups to get the proposal changed, notably by the European Airsoft Association (EAA, which UKAPU is a core member of). The first draft of the proposal would have stamped out airsoft in Europe by classing all replicas as firearms. The amendments that we have helped write will be voted on during Wednesday’s meeting, and should serve to delete the sections about classifying of replicas as firearms. The airsoft community did a great job of lobbying and showing airsoft in a positive light, so the amendments have been well received and we are heading towards a win on Wednesday. We also hope BFGs aren’t banned (EAA did what they could to stop that too) but that remains to be seen.
In November there will be a yes/no vote on accepting the finalised proposal. We can’t relax until then but if things go our way on Wednesday we will almost be out of the woods. Live shooting sports are still in danger of being devastated, quite intentionally, and there’s still very little focus on the weapons used by criminals and terrorists.
It wouldn’t hurt if everyone sent a last minute email to their MEPs asking them to vote in favour of the rapporteurs amendments to remove airsoft and replicas from the scope of the proposal.
https://www.mysociety.org/wehelpyou/contact-your-meps/
Courtesy of the EAA here are links to the Agenda and live feed for the meeting.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=COMPARL&reference=IMCO-OJ-20160713-1&format=XML&language=EN&secondRef=02
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/ep-live/nl/committees/video?event=20160713-1500-COMMITTEE-IMCO
Fingers crossed!
Kind Regards,
Matt Furey-King, Chair UK Airsoft Players Union- UKAPU