UKAPUThe late, great Mark Rasmussen got through to the nomination stage but make sure you vote for him too! Please like and share this image, lets make sure he wins category 23: Special Airsoft Player Award, as a small token of appreciation from the community. He’s up against some heavy hitters so get the word out.
http://playerschoice.popularairsoft.com/
3/4 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/
2/4 Northern 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/
1/4 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/
To follow from a previous post in which we put forward the notion of nominating the late Mark Rasmussen of Airsoft Denmark for “Player of the Year” – it appears that he’s made it through to the final 5.
I can’t tell you how to vote, but, when voting, give some thought to the chap who lived and breathed Airsoft – and wanted to shape it, change it for the better.
Make it happen!
David, Vice Chair
I have for you folks a small update – the Policing and Crime Bill is now entering “ping pong” or “whiff whaff”, depending on how ruffled your hair is.
There’s nothing raised about the (no longer proposed, actual) Airsoft amendments within the handover document, which is a good thing. Save for any dramatics raised during ping pong, these amendments will stay, and become part of the Policing and Crime Act 2017 (presumably) when enacted.
We’ll be giving you updates as the process furthers on.
David, Vice Chair
