Author: UKAPU News Desk

Thank you paul for your support 👍🏻

Sorry for any delay 😳

We are up to date with all the orders

www.ukapu.org.uk

Sigrun knows it!

Hello airsofters,

Its has came to our attention that our system has put a lot of payments in a pending status and on that it does not inform us .

So if you have not received your patches its because of this

This weekend i’ll be sorting through these and I’m really sorry about the delay

Lee

Sorry it’s taken a while to double check the outcome, but the long and short is that airsoft was victorious in the European Parliament vote, they decided not to class replica firearms as firearms. Victory! Id say this is the most important legal and political event in the history of airsoft, and our community did it together. Against the odds we turned the tide decisively, and turned opinion in favour of our brilliant hobby. Please read through fully the post below from Mr. Dekkers, President of the EAA, and please share with your friends and on airsoft pages. We aren’t totally safe yet and don’t forget UK airsoft also has unrelated problems in the form of the policing and crime bill.

Real firearms users could still be getting a bum deal from an amended firearms directive, even with the concessions that have been agreed, as the measures in the original proposal were so extreme and unreasonable.

Matt Furey-King, Chair UK Airsoft Players Union

Hi everyone we are still trying to unravel what happened with the IMCO vote on Wednesday. It was very fast, complicated and a little contradictory. Will let you know.

Regards,

Matt

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 blank fire grenades 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

Hello all.

Frank Bothamly of UKARA dropped me a line with some helpful corrections in regards to the post I wrote about airsoft and brexit, clarifying the situation with VAT and import duties. The aforementioned post has now been updated.

https://www.facebook.com/UKAPU/posts/966670233445947

Hope you are preparing to rain down plastic death on your foes tomorrow.

Regards,

Matt, Chair UKAPU