Full Auto In The Uk (again)

[JoseDominguez]

Originally posted by stongle
But a paintball gun only becomes subject to firearms legislation if the projectile crossed the 12ft/lb impact barrier. Using your logic re Full Auto, there would be a couple of thousand Airsofters doing porridge in this country if Full Auto was infact illegal?. Since a life-size replica of an M60 looks a tad more anti-social than an E-blade I'd imagine this may be the primary focus of the law. If FA is only illegal above the 12 ft/lps impact force or above 331 fps or indeed should be reclassed as a firearm, aren't you all barking up the wrong tree?

Shouldn't your focus not be anti-F/A but more keeping markers below the 12ft/lbs impact force. I'm confused as to why F/A is the great Satan, when it only applies to fire arms (or has Airsoft slipped through the net???)

I'm also curious (and I was asleep during GCSE Physics, got a C though), if the projectile is frangible, surely some of the impact force is dissipated on impact, no? if so surely that 12 ft/lbs is not breached at 331 fps. If that is the case then we should only shoot paint that is proven to break with relative ease. Cheap armour piercing paint used by many teams should be outlawed as this can cause both injury and inflect unnecessary pain. Why tournament don't insist on this I don't know.

I'm all for keeping paintball legal and safe in the UK, but surely there's more than one way to skin a cat. There's a lot of ill-considered idea's that if floated in public are likely to scare the living daylights out of the Home Office and likely end up with us being more rigorously restricted. If the penalty for discharging more than 1 ball per trigger ball is to do a bird, how do you deal with accidental trigger bounce? Please don't tell me you've never had a marker bounce on you, cos I know your talking rubbish. Even if just during set-up, you have still put yourself in contradiction of the law you advocate.

the best way for Paintball to be kept Legal is to:

Introduce a strict Velocity Cap (if we ever need to go that far)
Enforce a breakability test for Paint. If we can get to the point we are merely shooting a completely dissipating or frangible brittle shell most of our problems go away.

I'm not on any sort of safety crusade here........ I don't think full auto is particularly dangerous (we are talking a spyder here..... about 10bps anyway.. I reckon a hair triggered angel is a whole lot more dangerous) Don't get me wrong, I'm not on any sort of moral high ground here...... I was just pointing out a legal issue..... full auto is illegal, using one is illegal and a UK supplier is selling them, there ya go. I had one fired at me on Sunday..... the lad in question had no idea it was illegal (he'd have gotten a shock at STB next week if I hadn't told him).
For azzah......... muzzle energy is the 12 ft lbs thing...... i.e. it's got to be less than 12 ft lbs of muzzle energy to be legal. (and for stongle..... this is muzzle energy, doesn't matter what it's made of or whether it breaks on impact or not... muzzle energy is down to velocity and weight so a malteser and a paintball at 300fps have about the same muzzle energy).
As for airsoft......... muzzle energy is a factor of ammo weight and velocity (if you increase the weight of the projectile, then you have to reduce velocity to stay legal)..... if you work out the muzzle energy for an airsoft pellet then it's negligible......... something like two joules, this puts it into the "toy" category and no matter how many rounds it fires it's never going to be a firearm unless it's fired at about 1200fps as it never achieves muzzle energy that even registers on the firearms scale.. This is UK law, not me trying to make a point. Personaly I think full auto "toys" are pretty dangerous as there are no real safety controls on them......... but that's not the point. Regardless of what we think, owning a full auto capable marker is illegal.
As for the paint thing..... I agree in principle, but even tough paint loses a lot of impact energy to deformation, as long as it's not solid a thick shell will just hurt more. Not safe I agree, but not illegal.... whereas full auto is..... this could harm the sport... the supplier is unrepentant and claims I'm wrong "they aren't illegal" "firearms law doesn't apply to paintball" "rules on not using full auto are just site recommendations" to quote just three of their statements.
Oh, and as for accidental trigger bounce......... the last lot of advice put out by the UKPSF/home office stated that "accidental double balling" would not be considered a breech of the "no full auto" rule.
I am not advocating any law......... if I said "drink driving is illegal" would you argue with me?....... no, 'cos it is, and everybody knows it. it's just that in this case it doesn't seem like everyone is aware (one supplier and at least one poster). ... I'm not agreeing with/disputing the law...... just saying it's there.
Put simply...... on Sunday a player showed up with what could be considered an illegal firearm (under section 5 of the firearms act) he had no idea he was breaking the law. I'll put it this way........ I'm passing on info as I'd hate to see anyone prosecuted..... how about if I'd been a petty minded little prick who didn't like getting shot up by an illegal marker??? anyone see the potential consequences? it only has to happen once.
Anyway, this thread is going overboard now, and there's some stuff being posted that won't do us any good in the wrong hands.

 

[Azz3h]

Better the powers that be hear about it all now - sort it out and make sure people stop it, before things get badly out of hand...

Also - does that make shooting the new reball illegal because it doesn't disintergrate?

 

[Dazdread]

YES

I still think that you should pass the details of these products and stores onto the UKPSF so Steve can "Inform" them of the err's of their ways.

The US manufacturers should also be "Officially" informed so that they can make provision for Euro spec markers.

What do you do about Re-ball????? ban them from importing the product?

 

[stongle]

Errr, I'm not trying to disagree, my point is we're being very linear in our attitude towards the whole Firearms thingy. We're self regulating to a degree, but no actual case law or legal precedence exists, this seems to make a Paintball Gun ambiguous under the current legalise (did the govt classify Paintball Guns under the Firearms act or did we decide for ourselves to do it?). Justice and the law aren't completely blind, and Full Auto is a safety issue that doesn't apply to most Markers when a Semi is and can be shot much faster. Also I'm not a physicist, but there are other "guns" that must break the 12 ft/lbs ruling that aren't covered by the Firearms act, such as Nail guns, are their any carpenters doing porridge for having a DeWalt 1200E in their toolbox?

As you say we already enjoy, "an ignore em cos their mostly harmless" status with the Home Office, whether that changes who knows? When or IF the Home Office decides to take a long hard look at paintball guns, we may find that we suffer from a whole lot of "worse ills" than just full auto (non-frangible paint, velocity etc).

What should really be happening is Paintball guns being completely exempt from Firearms legislation and classified as sporting goods. I'm not sure how the UKPSF is liaising with the Govt on such issues, but there are certainly many ways to skin the safety cat all of which should be pushed. If we can prove them safe, I think the F/A Firearms Legislation disappears. The key to this is velocity and frangibility.

As to this debate, you raised the point about Full Auto in a debate Forum. Fair enough Everyone now knows Full Auto is de-facto Illegal in the UK, what the ruling does open up is a debate to safety, and frangible paint seems to be something ignored or unspoken by the representative bodies, now why is that?????

 

[Azz3h]

There are 3 classifications of guns.

Toy: Under a few ft/lbs means it doesn't count as anything legally and so isn't regulated. Airsoft guns fall into this, and nerf guns.

Air gun: Under 12 ft/lbs, don't need a license to own it, but cannot be anything more than one shot per pull of trigger

Firearm: Over 12 ft/lbs. Needs license to use.

At the moment paintball guns are classified as Air Guns. This still means they cannot fire any more than one fire per pull, and they don't need to fire frangible rounds legally as they still only fire the same muzzle energy as other Air Guns (which as you know fire solid metal pellets.)

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: Air soft is usually limited to about 1 Joule of muzzle energy

 

[stongle]

Originally posted by Azz3h
There are 3 classifications of guns.

Toy: Under a few ft/lbs means it doesn't count as anything legally and so isn't regulated. Airsoft guns fall into this, and nerf guns.

Air gun: Under 12 ft/lbs, don't need a license to own it, but cannot be anything more than one shot per pull of trigger

Firearm: Over 12 ft/lbs. Needs license to use.

At the moment paintball guns are classified as Air Guns. This still means they cannot fire any more than one fire per pull, and they don't need to fire frangible rounds legally as they still only fire the same muzzle energy as other Air Guns (which as you know fire solid metal pellets.)

Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: Air soft is usually limited to about 1 Joule of muzzle energy

And nail guns???. Got a bit of DIY to do on the girlfriend this weekend, don't fancy SO19 turning up in the middle of the action.

 

[Azz3h]

What muzzle energy does that fire at?

 

[ollytheosteo]

Ok- much confusion, understandable tho as the situation is confused.

Under UK firearms law a firearm is classed as a "lethal barrelled weapon". Lethality is defined by the level of muzzle energy, around 1.35 Joules as I recall, an upper limit decided years ago whilst trying to define the difference between toys and guns.

Nail guns etc have no barrel, and thus are not firearms, depite high muzzle energy. There is no mechanism in place to guide the nail in flight and thus they are a gun in name only.

Airsoft guns are exempt as toys as long as they have a muzzle velocity of under 377 fps with a 0.2gm BB, most places now enforce a 328 fps limit to allow a safety margin. Whilst it has yet to be tested in the courts, it has been suggested that shooting a person with a gun firing at over 1,35 joules could count as assault, even with their consent.

Markers are outside the current legislation, despite having a muzzle energy of over 1.35 J, because they are not a lethal weapon, having been built to fire a frangible projectile that is designed to be shot at a human being. This is why myself and a few others get excited over reballs, rufus dawg balls etc as they are a projectile designed to be shot from a marker that in the eyes of UK law could change its classification. Yikes! Test any marker firing reballs at 300fps and it will be classed as a firearm, thus making paintball matches illegal assault-fests unless the law is changed to allow them (yeah, right).
As far as full-auto is concerned, it only applies to firearms per se, true enough. But why push your luck. All other shooting sports in this country are regulated to degrees between annoying and insane (at the moment paintballers are incredibly lucky to operate under such loose constraints) but test these unwritten rules in the courts and set a precedent and we could see serious changes very quickly. At the present time retailers are supposed to voluntarily observe the airgun laws as far as selling markers is concerned, and these do not allow full-auto.
It seems only a matter of time befoire the sport faces stricter controls in this country, as usual not because of the actions of players, but of greedy retailers selling naughty guns to any yobbo that wants one. I am more worried by cheap plastic blowbacks being sold in tackle shops, as these are sold by people who would lose next to nothing if paintball were banned.

We urgently need a system of regulation for retailers selling markers, to ensure they are sold to legitimate players and that any dodgy features are removed. Nothing pisses me off more than being told by a retailer that the full-auto guns he is selling "aren't actually illegal" and that anyone who objects is a wuss. How long will the sport stay legal if that attitude continues? We are currently being offered the unparalelled opportunity to police ourselve, fail and we will be policed.

 

[Azz3h]

Ok - but where do air rifles come in (i.e. ones used for pest control?)

 

[ollytheosteo]

Air rifles are covered by the firearms act, but are not classified as firearms unless they have a muzzle energy of over 12 ftlb (or 6 for pistols). Anything over that is a firearm and needs an FAC to own.