Category: Legal Issues

Categories
Legal Issues

Shooting sports, the Offensive Weapons Bill and how Airsoft players can help!

Whats happening?

The Offensive Weapons Bill 2017-2019; the governments latest attempt to tackle violent crime in the UK. Laudable though the governments aims might be, firearms owners are quite rightly not happy! Why? How about…

  • Banning any rifle with a muzzle energy exceeding 13,600 joules – e.g. .50 calibre rifles.
  • Banning lever release rifles.(1)
  • Banning MARS (Manually Activated Release System) rifles.(2)

Rather bizarrely they are also proposing to ban bump stocks too. Yes, those things that were primarily designed to be used with semi-auto centre fire rifles. The same semi-auto centre fire rifles that were banned in the UK back in 1988. Now admittedly, banning bump stocks is neither here nor there, however, it clearly highlights the issue of knee-jerk, sensationalist and emotionally charged politics taking priority over facts, evidence and rational thinking.

The entire bill can be read here.

Why are they banning them?

Well, here is an excerpt from a frequently seen cut and paste response…

“Government has noted concerns around the potential for .50 calibre rifles and rapid firing rifles to be seriously misused and for loss of life to occur if they were to fall into the wrong hands”

Let that sink in for a moment. The potential for misuse.

So, the main reason they want to pursue a ban on legally owned sporting equipment is because something bad might happen. The government want to restrict the rights of law abiding shooters because bad people might do something bad.

The governments own data on gun crime(3) shows that it is on the rise, yet have so far failed to respond when questioned about criminal activity involving legally held firearms of the types they wish to ban.

In the governments own words on rates of firearms offences, rifles have remained the least common non-air firearm type, accounting for 1% annually. It should be noted that this 1% applies to all types of rifle, both UK legal and prohibited, all offence types and both legally owned and illegally obtained or possessed rifles.

So, could it be that the reason the statistics on the affected firearm types haven’t been published is because no crime has been committed with them and therefore no crime was recorded? Why would a problem need tackling if the problem didn’t exist in the first place?

Why should airsofters care?

To put it simply, because not caring is giving the government a free pass to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Airsoft, like shooting, isn’t safe from further legislation. They are both under constant threat from anti-shooting organisations and politicians wanting to make a name for themselves or grab a few easy votes.

As far as anyone knows, publicly at least, no crimes have been committed with legally held .50 calibre, lever release or MARS action rifles. So if you think they won’t go after airsoft again then it would do you well to remind yourself that in this case they are going after certain firearms types on the basis of ifs, buts and maybes.

It should never be forgotten that shooting sports and airsoft have common enemies that don’t and won’t differentiate. They won’t stop until they have achieved their goals and they won’t care if it destroys livelihoods and makes criminals out of law abiding shooters and airsofters enjoying their chosen pursuits!

The firearms community had our backs during the last crisis to affect airsoft, namely the PCA 2017, and neither group has the numbers to stand alone, nor should we stand alone!

What can you do about it?

1. Sign the petition calling for the removal of sections 28-35

The more signatures the better, so sign and share.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/223361

2. Write directly to the House of Common Public Bill Committee

If you have personal experience with the articles affected in this bill, such as certain types of knives & bladed items, firearms with a muzzle energy over 13.6kJ or MARS & lever release rifles and you feel your submission will be of benefit to the committee, this is your opportunity to write in.

https://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2018/june/have-your-say-on-the-offensive-weapons-bill/

3. Write to your MP

This is REALLY important. Many MP’s will vote the bill through on the basis of the proposals for tackling acid attacks and knife/offensive weapon crime and to vote against it would potentially be political suicide! We need to get MP’s to challenge the sections of the bill that affect shooting sports, especially when they involve such extreme measures to tackle crime that doesn’t exist!

https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-your-mp/

4. Share your responses

Let the community know if your MP has been supportive. Similarly, if you receive a cut and paste response or if they haven’t even considered the points you have raised, then also let the firearms community know. A good way to do this is to email or message your responses to the guys over at Firearms UK through their website or Facebook page. You can also join the Firearms UK facebook community page and post responses there.

5. Follow the progress of the bill

Other than via the community you can follow the progression of this bill on its own page on the Parliament website.

https://services.parliament.uk/Bills/2017-19/offensiveweapons.html

 

(1) The mechanism of the lever-release rifle means it unloads itself automatically but stops short of reloading – that is, chambering a new cartridge. In the popular Southern Gun Company design a lever by the operator’s thumb allows the bolt to be released, manually chambering a fresh round.

(2) The MARS (Manually Activated Release System) action achieves much the same thing as a lever release but is released by repeated trigger pressures. One press of the trigger fires a shot; the second releases the working parts ready for the next round.

(3) http://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-7654/CBP-7654.pdf

Categories
Legal Issues News Policing and Crime Bill

UKAPU and UKARA briefing on commencement of PCA firearms provisions

In light of the new Home Office circular please view the PDF or image below

Airsoft and the PCA 2017 – Briefing Note v1-2a

Home Office Circular- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/circular-0062017-firearms-controls

Categories
EU Firearms Directive Legal Issues News Policing and Crime Bill

Information on the Police and Crime Bill 2015/16 and the EU Firearms Directive

We posted these on our facebook and are now available on our site.

Scotland

At the start of the year the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act came into effect. You don’t need a licence for any ‘barreled weapons’ which are non firearms. The policing and crime bill will define ‘airsoft guns’ as non firearms, but that isn’t law yet.

Paul Cook, our Scotland Representative, has talked with Scots government and Police, and they don’t appear to have a set policy on power thresholds until the PCB is enacted. For now the police seem to regard the upper limit for airsoft as 1.3J for fully auto and 2.5J for everything else, same as the PCB airsoft exception and the old ACPO recommendation. The police are taking the new licencing law seriously, so make sure your airsoft sniper rifle is under 520fps with a .20g bb. If you have more questions on the subject, please join the UKAPU Scotland FB group https://www.facebook.com/groups/265899950412835/

 

Northen Ireland

Our members in Northern Ireland want to get an airsoft exception to the 1J energy threshold that mirrors the exception in the Policing and Crime Bill. This seems reasonable, asking the Northern Ireland Assembly to bring the law in line with the rest of the UK. We suspect that making this change happen will only be possible immediately after the PCB is enacted, so please join the UKAPU Northern Ireland group and get involved ASAP, there’s much to be done and little time https://www.facebook.com/groups/337701093252443/

EU Firearms Directive

The sneaky proposed changes to the EU firearms directive would have been the biggest catastrophe in the history of airsoft. They wanted to classify all replicas in Europe as firearms. It would have made most airsoft replicas illegal (all the full auto ones, for sure), and the remaining few would become exceptionally hard to obtain. This is exactly how the law is in Australia, where players simply regard it as a straight up ban. It’s a ban by any other name. And the European Commision never gave any justification or explanation for it!

But lobbying from the airsoft community seems to have paid off. The latest leaked draft of the proposal coming from the Trilogue defines a firearm as a device which fires live rounds. Seems that the European Commision has been forced to do a U turn on this issue, airsoft and replicas will not be reclassified as firearms.

There’s still a slight problem in that they seem to have slipped back into prior wording defining a firearm, which is a device utilising ‘combustible propellant’. Of course, gas powered airsoft replicas use propellant which is often combustible. UKAPU and EAA (European Airsoft Association) brought this up with Parliament earlier this year and they voted to change the wording in their draft, but appears that this amendment hasn’t been adopted in Trilogue.

This is one of the reasons they call the Trilogue ‘the death of democracy’. It’s a secret meeting hidden from the public, where the result of voting by our elected representatives can be discarded by appointed, unaccountable, anonymous bureaucrats.

We’ve contacted the Rapporteur again to ask for the correct wording to be included in the final amendment. The Rapporteur, Vicky Ford MP, has done a great deal for airsoft so far.

It’s hard to predict what the commission will do to live firearms owners in the new directive. It seems like they will try and ban as much as they can get away with. President Jean-Claude Juncker has been trying to smear firearms owners and the european parliament, saying that the gun lobby is overruling the will of the people of Europe. But this evil ‘gun lobby’ IS the people of Europe, it’s sportsmen like you and I writing to our representatives, asking them to save our hobby. No firearms or airsoft enthusiast should sit back and allow the anti gun lobby to chip away at us, allowing them to ban a few more categories of gun every decade till there’s no community left.

You can keep up to date with the situation by following Firearms UK and Firearms United
https://www.facebook.com/firearmsuk.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FirearmsUnited/

Full Auto HPA / GBB

The law on airsoft power limits is changing. By carrying on as normal you could be committing a criminal act. This post turned into a bit of an essay, as I wanted everyone to have the full picture, but please do read it through.

The airsoft exception in the Policing and Crime Bill 2015-16 (PCB) will (amongst other things) set the upper power limit for fully automatic airsoft guns at 1.3 Joules (approximately 370fps with a .20g bb). To classify as an airsoft gun it must be;

‘Not capable of discharging a missile (of any kind) with kinetic energy at the muzzle of the weapon that exceeds the permitted level.’

Due to being over the new lethal threshold and exception threshold, an airsoft gun capable of firing at over 1.3J is a firearm, subject to the firearms act, and if it’s capable of full auto fire then a firearm is subject to general prohibition under section 5(1)(a) of the firearms act 1968. Possessing a section 5 firearm without permission from the secretary of state carries a mandatory 5 year prison sentence.

1.3J is the power limit recommended by ACPO that we’ve been operating under since 2011, but what’s changed is that this won’t be a recommendation any more. When it was a recommendation it was difficult for the Police to work out whether to press air gun based charges or not, and lethality of the device could still be proven or disproven in court, as the recommendation had little legal standing. So it wasn’t a problem, as it was still so much grey area that prosecuting an airsoft player wouldn’t be worth the hassle. But after the PCB becomes law it will be easy to determine what is and isn’t lethal, it will be made clear that possessing a full auto airsoft gun firing at over 1.3J is possession of a prohibited firearm. Just to reiterate, that could mean 5 years in jail.

This comparatively low lethal threshold (though, not as low as it would have been if not for all the lobbying over the last few years) raises questions surrounding imports and ‘ready convertibility’ but it’s best to cover that subject in another post if people are interested. We’re not too concerned with semi auto airsoft guns which are capable of exceeding the threshold, as the threshold is much more generous (2.5J) and above that they simply fall into the same class as air rifles. Which isn’t a problem (unless you live in Scotland like me, in which case it could be classed as an unlicensed air rifle).

The concern I wish to address in this post is that full auto gas and HPA airsoft guns are, generally speaking, easy to push over 1.3J even in off the shelf form, by loading them with black gas, or simply turning up the regulator. It doesn’t matter that you run your gun in game at less than 1.3J, what matters is that your HPA or GBB full auto is ‘capable of discharging a missile (of any kind) with kinetic energy at the muzzle of the weapon that exceeds the permitted level’. If your airsoft gun was confiscated and brought in for testing, the forensic lab would probably try and find out if your gun was ‘capable of exceeding the permitted level’. They would put in the most powerful gas available or crank the regulator up. As it stands most of the HPA and GBBR airsoft guns currently in the UK will be regarded as Section 5 firearms. Not good.

Some players who message us seem concerned that the UKAPU committee isn’t worried about this situation, that we are only protecting UKAPU members with AEGs. That’s not the case at all. 7 out of 9 people on the committee own HPA guns. Most of us have GBBRs too. UKAPU has been campaigning on this issue since 2010 when we started meeting with forensic labs and writing to ACPO on this very subject. We’ve raised the issue repeatedly with the Home Office at our scheduled meetings, and with MPs. Most people are likely only aware of this issue because we keep banging on about it. So believe me when I say that we care about this problem, we’ve done, and are doing, everything we can. For some reason, which we don’t really understand, few people in airsoft have taken an interest. Even now, mere months away from the new law coming into force, the community is, on the whole, silent on the issue. One or two people are outright denying it’s happening, which is baffling, as the draft bill has been progressing all year, easily available on the parliament website.
http://services.parliament.uk/…/2015-…/policingandcrime.html

We, the people who are paying attention, need to work turn these attitudes around.

There are also some people who are arguing that the police won’t care, it will never come up. FELWG (firearms and explosives licensing working group) have been asking the government for years to set a lethal threshold in law, so CPS, the Police Chiefs, etc. were crucial in making this law happen, they do care. If airsoft players and businesses take the attitude that they’ll ignore the new law, they will be jeopardising the airsoft community’s reputation as law abiding. It’s fair to say still have an open line to the government because of how seriously we have taken our responsibilities with the VCRA over the last decade, and our good citizenship in general.

Recently something has come up which is eerily close to the situation we find ourselves in with airsoft guns and section 5. Everyone assumed that the Steyr LP50 airt pistol didn’t fall foul of section 5 prohibition, but without warning Yorkshire Police took an interest in what had been referred to as a ‘technicality’ and started confiscating them from ranges and retailers (they are £1500, so it’s quite a loss). So it’s fair to say, these ‘technicalities’ are not off the radar by any means http://www.thefirearmblog.com/…/breaking-common-2000-airgu…/

Obviously the Police will not be coming to an airsoft site just to chrono guns. But there are scenarios in which the Police could send your airsoft guns away for examination, real situations we’ve seen UKAPU members get into a few times over the years. For example, a nosy neighbour notices you handling a replica in your house and calls it in. Police come to your house but want to use a lab to verify that it isn’t a real firearm (kind of daft, but it has happened). Or perhaps your car is randomly stopped and searched on the way to a game, and the same thing occurs. The Police are totally cool with airsoft players most of the time, but every once in a while there’s a bad officer with a point to prove, who is under the false impression that airsoft replicas are somehow unlawful, and will go to great lengths to prove wrongdoing. Another more likely scenario is when importing an airsoft gun UKBA stop your package to examine it, and run it through a chrono or a lab as a routine check.

Clearly it’s not proportional to lock someone up for 5 years for owning a 371fps airsoft gun. The Home Office were eager to address other issues we brought to them, for which we are extremely grateful. But they didn’t appear very interested in this, the elephant in the room. Like I say, we’ve been pushing this issue hard over the last year. So have UKARA, they’ve met with CPS, NPCC, and firearms lobby groups, trying to draw attention to the problem. In November we were relieved to hear the Home Office tell us that this needs to be looked at. So UKARA and UKAPU will meet with the Home Office firearms department again, in early to mid 2017. There’s no legislation changes on the table, but we will be seeking official guidance on how to comply with the new law. More importantly we’ll be asking them to issue sensible guidance on how to enforce the new laws. Another part of the PCB actually makes it mandatory for Police chiefs to enforce Home Office guidance, so the authority of the HO guidance can’t be underestimated.

But that leaves us in a sticky situation in the meantime. The PCB will soon be enacted and HPA/GBB full auto guns will mostly be classed as section 5 firearms. Perhaps our meeting with the Home Office will not bear fruit and this will be the situation forever (I hope not, but there’s no way to know). So what I would recommend is that you find a way to comply with the law as is- mechanically limit your full auto HPA/GBB guns so that they cannot fire at more than 1.3J.

We have been discussing technical solutions on the UK airsoft lobbying group. Feel free to join in https://www.facebook.com/groups/UKairsoftlobby/

I don’t really know what’s going to happen in the future as regards to making HPA and GBBR ‘UK compliant’ prior to import. I was hoping that the retail and manufacturing sectors would be leading this, and would be pushing compliant products already. Perhaps some are working on it, but are keeping it quiet. I’ve no idea.

The law is soon to be quite clear I think. UKAPU isn’t going to enforce the law, or force our interpretation of the new law on the community, that’s not what we do. We’re not an industry body, or a governing body, we just do what we can to protect the interests of UKAPU members. We’re not trying to justify the way the law has been written. We’re just putting the information out there.

Don’t be too despondent, I’m sure technical solutions will be available that will allow GBB and HPA to comply with the new law and carry on being used. Improvise, adapt and overcome, as we say in the Army. The Home Office still want to discuss the situation, so that door isn’t shut either.

Now for the usual reminder- if you are an airsoft player please become a part of UKAPU (if you haven’t already) and spread our message, because UKAPU is only as strong as you make it. We need a strong players association to keeping airsoft from being banned or heavily restricted in the future.

Kind Regards,
Matt Furey-King
Chair UK Airsoft Players Union

 

 

Categories
EU Firearms Directive

EU Firearms Proposal Update

Update on Proposal 2015/0269, the proposal to amend the EU firearms directive (for clarity this is not related to the policing and crime bill, this is a separate issue with even greater potential consequences)-

The proposal is currently in the Trilogue stage. This is a set of informal negotiations between the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission. During this process the 3 bodies will agree on what goes into the final proposal, from there it’s a yes/no vote on whether to implement the final proposal into the directive, after that the directive is implemented in national law. The trilogue is a tad secretive and we’ll not likely know the results till its done. The airsoft community has done what it can to influence the process. Now we’ll just have to wait and see what comes.

The IMCO current draft of the proposal, based on the amendments voted on by the European Parliament, is airsoft friendly. But the commission’s document is essentially the first draft of the proposal, which wants to see all replica firearms classed as real firearms (and all firearms with ‘military appearance’ banned, to boot). They will find a mid point between the two documents. So we have to hope that the IMCO document is fully implemented, as far as airsoft is concerned. This should be the case, there doesn’t seem to be much desire from the Council to reclassify replicas as firearms. Vicky Ford MEP is on side (she’s met regularly with airsoft representatives from our parent body European Airsoft Association and Cybergun/ASG) and understands the ridiculousness of the original proposal, in regards to airsoft. As the Rapporteur Ms. Ford will be involved in the trilogue throughout.

I’m not sure where Firearms shooters stand at the moment with the proposal, its gotten quite complicated. I understand that de-act owners could substantially loose out at the moment.

We’ll let you know when we hear more. Airsoft should be OK but keep your fingers crossed.

Matt Furey-King
Chair, UK Airsoft Players Union

Categories
Policing and Crime Bill Uncategorised

Amendment to be withdrawn

Folks, I’d like to present to you some good news from UKAPU, UKARA and the ATB.

To quote the Chairman Matt, from our Facebook page:

We have some great news for UK airsoft this morning. Lord Shrewsbury of the GTA has voluntarily decided to withdraw his amendment in regards to the airsoft exception from the Policing and Crime Bill 2015/16. This is the best possible outcome for UK airsoft. Lord Shrewsbury tells us he better understands airsoft now that he is properly informed, and that he is extremely keen to work with us and move forwards as a part of a unified firearms community. Please get word out and apply the brakes on this campaign, there’s nothing we need to counteract right now, the airsoft exception is not being questioned, and we certainly don’t want at this stage to create fruitless hassle for our valuable new ally. So to clarify, tweets emails and letters to Lords and Lord Shrewsbury should stop now.

When asked to contribute to this campaign the response from the UK airsoft was phenomenal. You should feel proud of the good work you’ve put in. There was a tiny element that was abusive and even threatening towards Lord Shrewsbury and needless to say, this is totally unacceptable behaviour and counterproductive, we condemn this behaviour unreservedly. Those individuals have been reported to the Police and we hope that such individuals are subject to the full weight of the law. But on the whole we saw an overwhelming positive response. I even saw some Mums writing to representatives to say tell them that airsoft had been a huge force for good in their children’s lives. I’d also like to make you aware that the 3 UK airsoft associations have done a colossal amount (most of it behind the scenes) to get us this far, and will continue to work for you over the coming months, so please keep supporting them in turn. Another group which gave us huge support was real firearms shooters, and grass roots shooting organisations such as Firearms UK. There wasn’t anything at stake for real firearms people and yet they leapt to the defence of airsofters. Bear that in mind should you see the firearms community facing hardship in the future.

Things are not finished with the PCB by any means. We still have concerns that, even with the exception in place, if you unwittingly import a slightly hot fully auto AEG, or have your HPA or GBB replicas are tested at maxed out pressure and heavy ammo you could face section 5 firearms charges (5 years mandatory sentence), which would be wildly disproportionate and unacceptable, even if it only ever happens to one of us.

So we ask everyone to keep up to date with this Bill for the next few months and keep discussing it.

If you are still receiving replies from MPs and Lords, please continue to post them on the group so we can ‘map the ground’. This group is very well informed and a useful asset in itself. https://www.facebook.com/groups/UKairsoftlobby/

Be sure to Like UK Airsoft Players Union to keep up to date https://www.facebook.com/UKAPU/ but more importantly players should join UKAPU, so we can keep doing what we do http://www.ukapu.org.uk/join/

Airsoft Trade Body will have its website online soon so get involved if you run an airsoft business and want to safeguard it http://www.atb.org.uk/

Retailer membership of old stalwart UKARA is of course available from their website http://www.ukara.org.uk/index.php

Please like, comment and share.

Kind Regards,
Matt Furey-King, Frank Bothamley & Tim Wyborn
On behalf of UKAPU, UKARA & ATB

Categories
News Policing and Crime Bill

Save the Airsoft Exception!

Categories
Policing and Crime Bill Uncategorised

Gun Trade Association Boycott?

Categories
Policing and Crime Bill Uncategorised

Firearms Industry Body Attempts to Ruin UK Airsoft

There has been an unprecedented attack on UK airsoft. Charles Henry John Benedict Crofton Chetwynd Chetwynd-Talbot, 22nd Earl of Shrewsbury, President of the Gun Trade Association, has tabled an amendment which aims to do away with the airsoft exception in the Policing and Crime Bill. That means we will not get our promised lethal threshold of 1.3J for full auto and 2.5J for semi auto/single shot, instead, we’ll be stuck with the 1J legal limit for airsoft, forever, across the whole of the UK.

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/lbill/2016-2017/0055/17055(e).pdf

This is a replication of the attack we faced earlier in the year from the Gun Control Network, working through Lynn Brown MP. This time, it has gone further and an amendment has been proposed. The Earl of Shrewsbury is a party whip who has vast power, influence, and wealth, who is quite capable of damaging our hobby by lumping us with a paltry 1J limit (328fps with a .20g BB).

We have two things going for us; One is that we are in the right. The forensic evidence supports our position (as do the government). The other advantage we have is that there are tens of thousands of us and we have a very strong presence on social media. At the moment both UKAPU and UKARA are making enquiries and looking at strategy. Soon we will ask the community to get involved and spread the word. The community is just about all we have to fight with.

We are doing everything in our power and we are preparing a campaign, so please watch our page closely, get the word out and prepare to fight hard for the future of your hobby.

Airsoft does not have the money or influence of the firearms trade. Grass roots lobbying from players is a proven and potent weapon, but this time, we are going to need an overwhelming and enthusiastic response from every single one of you.

This time, we need you, the community to stand with us as one. Together we can spread our message out and beat this latest challenge, but we need you, your friends, and everyone else involved in Airsoft to communicate the same message to those in power.

Matt Furey-King, Chair UK Airsoft Players Union

Categories
EU Firearms Directive Uncategorised

Victory in the European Parliament Vote

A message from Joachim Dekkers, President of our parent organisation, the European Airsoft Association;EAA-Logo-white-with refelction

Dear Airsoftsport enthusiasts,

As you know on July 13th there was an important vote on the Firearm Directive proposal 91/477, which also included Airsoft Devices (for example replicas and blank firing grenades).

The part of the vote which actually dealt with our beloved sport, took approximately 1 minute. It was fast and hectic to say the least.

The result of the vote was in favor of the Airsoftsport, because a large majority of the IMCO Committee members, voted to have replicas placed outside the scope of the directive.

Still, it took us some time to actually confirm this, because the documents released on the vote are difficult to understand.

This result is a small victory but we are not there yet. More negotiations will follow after the EU Parliament recess (ends August 21st).

I know that many of you have been asking about the blank firing grenades. We are working on this and will give you an answer as soon as possible. Please be patient due to the holiday season and the much needed rest.

We were not able to have achieved this, if it was not for others too. The industry (http://www.airsoft-european-call.com/) who came together for this united cause, the IMCO Committee members who voted against having replicas placed inside the scope, colleagues from other sport shooting organizations and individual players.

I was in touch with Vicky Ford who is the chair of the IMCO committee and I thanked her and her team on behalf of the Airsoftsport community for the common sense and hard work. She send me an open letter for the Airsoftsport community;

Open Letter on the European Firearms Directive

Dear Reader

Following July’s vote in the European Parliament IMCO committee I have been asked to provide further clarification regarding airsoft.

The first draft of Commission’s text was extremely poorly worded.  It would have unintended consequences for many different legal owners, including those involved in legitimate activities such as historical re-enactments, training, parades and sporting events  as well as Airsoft.

Over 800 amendments were tabled by Members of the European Parliament including many by myself.  I have led a series of negotiations to try to resolve as many issues as possible.  Where MEPs had differing views these were put to a vote in order to ascertain the majority. 

There was a very large amount of support amongst MEPs for maintaining the current position for Airsoft.  The parliament committee voted to reject the European Commission suggestions for replicas and instead recommends that objects that cannot be converted to firearms, and do not share an essential competent with a firearm, should not be included in the scope of the directive.

The parliament’s  amendments make it clear that a ‘firearm’ shall not include items designed ”to only be capable of expelling a shot, bullet or projectile by the action of compressed air or other gas not generated by the action of a combusted propellant, or are designed as airsoft devices or airgun devices of any description from which only a small missile with limited energy can be discharged, provided that they can be used for the stated purpose only and are not capable of being converted in such a way as to render them capable of expelling a shot, bullet or projectile by the action of a combusted propellant;”

This first vote of the European Parliament committee is not a final decision.  The next stage is to enter into negotiations with the European Council (which includes the representatives from the 28 different EU member countries) and the European Commission so called “trialogue” discussions.  During the trialogue discussion it is often the case that further clarification or technical adjustments can be made. 

I am very grateful to the many stakeholder groups and shooting organisations who have given expert guidance including the European Airsoft Association.

Vicky Ford MEP

You can imagine for all of us this has been a long and tiring road which is still not over yet. The proposal will keep us busy until the end of 2016, as a parliament vote is scheduled for November 22nd.

My request to the entire community is to be proud of our beloved sport. Don’t be afraid to mention that you are an Airsoftsport enthusiast and above all, keep raising positive awareness wherever you go.

Together with all people involved we will continue to do our utmost best, to make sure the core values of the Airsoftsport are not hurt.

Kind regards,

Joachim

President

European Airsoft Association

Categories
EU Firearms Directive Uncategorised

Last minute update on EU firearms directive vote

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