UKAPUNews Posts from United Kingdom Airsoft Players Association.
Now that Christmas is over, why not take part in a skirmish with like minded individuals and as an added bonus, take part in a discussion that might just shape the future of Airsoft in the UK?
Don’t forget that the UKAPU AGM and Game Day is being held on the 12th of January 2019 in Birmingham – for further information please examine our Press Officer’s wonderful poster, or read the shared post below.
Look forward to seeing you!
~ David
UKAPU Chairman
💥 Important AGM Announcement 💥
It’s that time of the year again folks – the time when both members of the UKAPU committee and other members congregate for Airsoft related hijinks, the relaying of fun stories (or as the case may be, history lessons) followed by the statutory Annual General Meeting.
We’d love for our members to the 2019 Game Day & AGM – hosted on Saturday 12th of January, which is being held at Grange Live Gaming – which is conveniently located in the centre of Birmingham.
Doors will open for 8.30am, and we will hopefully start playing at 10.00am.
Cost for attending the UKAPU exclusive game day is £25 (£5 deposit and £20 on the door), but as this is an inner city location very reasonably priced parking is available in the immediate vicinity.
Link to pay deposit/secure attendance to game day: https://www.ukapu.org.uk/agm-2019
Three important notes to make:
1) Not a member? You can join UKAPU today for free – please visit https://www.ukapu.org.uk/join for further details.
2) The nomination period is open for all positions (as it is every year), so if you wish to join the committee in either a vacant position, or challenge someone who already holds a position and is up for re-election, please contact us.
3) We are still accepting points to discuss at the AGM/management meeting, please forward these to us if you have any.
We at the UKAPU committee look forward to your attendance!
David Weston
UKAPU Chairman
PS: This will be sent out in an e-mail later on today.
To our members,
We are in the process of planning out AGM for some time in January 2019
We don’t know where the AGM will take place, but, we will aim to continue with our usual format of a skirmish and a couple of meetings in the evening.
If you, as a member have something you would like to raise (and don’t feel like waiting before the formal announcement), then I would like to invite you to contact us via whatever means with a discussion point for the AGM.
~ David
UKAPU Chairman
We know that a number of our members are real steel shooters as well as airsofters so this will hopefully come as encouraging news!
The original scope of the Offensive Weapons Bill was to tackle knife crime and acid attacks but, amendment after amendment was thrown into the mix and it went far beyond its original scope. Specifically, the banning of certain types of firearm was added. The result was a concerted effort from the shooting community to challenge these specific amendments.
It’s not over yet but, it’s a great example of what can be achieved when enough people support it!
A pair of announcements to our members:
Firstly, we have tweaked our constitution and affiliate agreement, there have been only minor tweaks to the constitution, such as formally moving the AGM to the beginning of the year to reflect our new practice.
You can view this new constitution (and more of our governing documents) via our documents page:
Secondly, I have been asked to pass a message onto both our members and members of the Airsoft community who are thinking of becoming members of UKAPU regarding VCRA compliant defences.
Taking into consideration the opinions of members at the 2017-2018 AGM, UKAPU has no current intention to manage a VCRA compliant defence system, thus, UKAPU membership *cannot* be used as a defence.
~ David
Hi members, Matt here. I’ve been appointed to write a new series of posts, of which this is the first. The series is called ‘UKAPU Heroes’.
Over the years certain people like myself have acted as figureheads for the association, and members will probably recognise our names because of this. But behind the scenes other people have been grinding away at thankless tasks for UKAPU, for no pay or benefits. Without their extraordinary efforts UKAPU would not be here today, and would have achieved nothing. So what we’d like to do is draw your attention to some of the low profile people who went above and beyond what was asked of them, and thank them.
UKAPU Hero #1- Paul Gilbert
The first person I’d like to talk about is Paul Gilbert of Defcon Airsoft. Back in 2016 UKAPU had been neglected, our website and membership system had fallen over completely, and the committee at the time had quit without finding replacements. The PCB had started to come about, so a few of us decided get the association restarted as quickly as possible, for the upcoming fight.
Paul was moving house and moving his shop to new premises at this time, and despite already having a mammoth workload, he volunteered to create a brand new website with integrated membership system for us. This system has been absolutely brilliant, and is the same one we still use today. Despite taking time away from his business for us, Paul never wanted any payment for the many hours he spent sorting things out, and we’d have been at a loss without him.
We’ve never given him credit for creating the membership system, website, and everything that goes with it. The UKAPU committee would like to belatedly pass on our enormous gratitude to Paul. If you see Paul around we hope you’ll give him a thank you too, and please check out his excellent store in Stoke-on-Trent too https://www.defconairsoft.co.uk
So, a huge thank you, Paul Gilbert, UKAPU hero!
A couple of months ago, our press officer posted a press indicating the plight that the folks with real firearms are facing.
Since that time however, there have been a few amendments by a few MPs that have been placed in the queue that have placed a spanner in the works (well, even more so than when the bill was first introduced)
Some of these delightful changes include a ban on anyone under 18s from the mere possession of air rifles/pistols on private land outwith a club, a ban on under 21s purchasing knives, and other interesting amendments that are causing concern to myself and other organisations, from extremely large to small.
At the time when this previous post went out I had asked our wonderful press officer to suggest that only people who had first hand knowledge of the affected firearms (muzzle KE greater than 13.6kJ, semi-automatics) contact the relevant committee but as project creep has taken a hold of this opportunistic bill, I’d like to extend my invitation to contact the House of Common Public Bill Committee to the following:
– Parents of children who together “plink” on private property using air rifles and pistols (specifically not airsoft replicas)
– People under the age of twenty one who do not live with people over the age of twenty one (which, one would presume would be literally every single non-mature university student)
If these aren’t you (and you feel you would be negatively affected by the changes in this bill), then I’d still like to invite you to write to your MP – despite what people say, your voice does count.
There are two things that I’d to note – these amendments will not affect Airsoft, but, they will affect people who play Airsoft. I’m sure there are many of our members out there who also own air rifles and shoot with their children in a back garden safely.
Secondly, there are many amendments that will not make its way into a further draft of the bill – like for example, this interesting bit of proposed knife legislation (hopefully) but it’s your duty to let your MP know that you do not agree with these proposed changes to legislation.
Remember, they work for you.
~ David
You may be aware of articles in local newspapers which have been circulated, alluding to the seizure of realistic imitation firearms from an individual in Hertfordshire. The article implied that the airsoft replicas had been confiscated by the police after the owner displayed them on social media. This rightly caused concern in the airsoft community.
We at UKAPU began looking further into this case as soon as we received word of it. We’ve come to the conclusion that this case is not relevant to airsoft skirmishing and there are no issues raised by this case which will affect our members – despite the concerning way the case was portrayed within the press release.
Due to the nature of the case we are not able to make further comments regarding this matter, and will not be pursuing for further information.
~ David
