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full auto mode (ok or not?) ramping in UK

It's not a rifle because the barrels not long enough - or something along those lines...

Basically, it doesn't classify as a rifle.


Its not the length of the barrel. Its the fact that the energy of the projectile is under the critical limit, and the fact that the ammunition is frangible which classifies it as a toy.


Now if you put marbles in it, dial it up to 350 and start popping your neighbours it becomes a weapon.
In the same way that if you shove someones fingers in a toaster that becomes a weapon. Thats regardless of whether the toaster is semi (one press of the button one slice) or assisted (one press of the button toasts mutliple slices/)
 

Marcus Geezer

Platinum Member
Legal?

Isn't their a comment about the barrel not being rifled, rather than the barrel being a particualr length.

And please, can people please be mindful about what saying what is legal or not. Thier is the law.... i.e. if you break it you go to prison... and then thier are rules such as what you can and can't do in tourneys and such forth where the consequence is points deducted or getting kicked out, and then their are recomendations, such as what I think UKPSF are trying to do by setting limits on bps and such forth..... and the consequences of breaking these recomendations are what....

....well.........

As Nitroball posted ultimately we are reliant on the paintball site setting limits as to what we can use, and these will be in line with their risk assesments and subsequently their insurance, which is all probably based upon a set of recomendations as issued by the UKPSF. Am I right?

Hence break the rules, someone gets hurt, and the site will possibly fall foul of the law by being prosecuted by the HSE. This will equal bad publicity for paintball and everyone is a loser....

(Blimey hope that made sense.. I'm off my soapbox now... :eek: )
 

icejohn

Member
Sep 24, 2006
85
0
16
law and perspective and what people do their actions

Ok marcus I agree in principle with what you say but....... i also agree with what john c says as well.

law and perspective and what people do their actions.

I have to say that yes anything can become weapon the toaster argument was a good one. :D however as i see the law at the moment the safety aspect is what the firearms act in my opinion is public safety. eg you dont want some 14 year kiddy shooting by standers in a built up area, on a friday nite bit of mayham. So the toaster argument comes into effect here. A marker is being used creating a dangerous enviroment against the public.

However how can one argue that a marker ramping in a tourament creats a dangerous enviroment. One expects to get hit with paintballs after all thats the whole point of why we play.:rolleyes: obviously wearing goggles etc. Now this perspective for it to be law ( i studyed law and if you look at the principle behind any law, they have to follow through and apply to any situation). Let me clarify here incase i get shot down lol i am not a lawyer. Lets just say well read mmm. Ok so perspective I reccon most people would take a different view on the above sinerio regarding if the act applies from the health and safety point of view one situation is clear cut and the other is not.

Now the third point -peoples actions. Do people play tournaments right now with ramp modes on? yes they do. The other question then is do all people use just semi auto or do sites? ans no they dont!!!

The grey area exists and will continue to exist. Why? No one knows exactly or is willing to find out. this post would not have the wide range of discussion that is does.

The status quo benefits all. The "loop hole" if you want to call it that exists so it can be closed at some unknown point in the future.... or perhaps allowed to be open legitimately.;) ;)
 

NitroBall

SandStorm
Feb 20, 2006
2,890
581
148
104
Derby
How i read John C's post , is he was just arguing the fact the difference between a toy and a weapon.

icejohn, i can only assume the point your trying to make here stating there is a grey area regards to firemodes on a paintball marker. That there is a loop-hole within the law, therefore making it " No LAW ".

The current rules in tournaments as well as rec-ball sites has been passed down to the site owners and event organisers as a standard, with safety in mind.

As there is no LAW set in stone, there is common sense and i dont really see an issue with the modes we are using (semi, and ramping @ 15.4 bps, with a 280fps max).

Is full-auto fun ? probably for the 12 year old kid whose just bought his first marker.
 

Mario

Pigeon amongst the cats
Sep 25, 2002
6,044
40
133
Location, Location.
Hold on - weve had a definitive answer from pretty much the only guy in the know about these things and yet were still discussing them?
 

icejohn

Member
Sep 24, 2006
85
0
16
borrowed answer thats exactly explains what i ment

Tachnically speaking, there is no such thing as a fully automatic paintball gun. The difference being, that all other guns/weapons/firearms that shoot/operate on full automatic, do so by utilising spent gasses from the previous discharge to re-cock the weapon, whilst the sear remains held down. A paintball gun has to physically operate a seperate solenoid in order to re-fire, technically making it an 'assisted automatic operation,' which is not legislated for, or even mentioned in the UK firearms laws & mandates & although this does not make it legal, neither does it make it illegal. Without a test-case going to a High court (NOT a magistrate's court) a ruling cannot be made either way, hence 'Only a Judge can decide'


The best thing that could happen is that some little scrote actually does get arrested & tried for using a 'full auto' paintball gun. This way a Judge will have to commit to a ruling either for or against it, doing away with the 'grey area' altogether. This way, at least there would be black & white rules & guidelines for us to follow. Until this happens, we will always be in a state of gun/not gun limbo.
__________________


Quit as all hell. It's over, me gone.
Last edited by robtattoo : 27-10-2005 at 02:06 PM.

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I have borrowed robtattoos post to answer nitros question as robtattos explains it far better than i could. ref the "grey area" i mentioned.

The ukpsf mention this:-
"happy” with the “turbo” mode demonstrated at the meeting. After further discussion with the Home Office this week they agree it is a “grey” area and that the only way of confirming the legality of the “turbo” mode would be in a court of law."

Now based on the common sence approach that means thats you can! Kinda like 70mph is the legal road limit on a motor way however some govt road study could say mmmm ok 50mph would half road deaths or something. Everyone talks about it and everyone says what a great idea yet people would still drive at 70mph until it becomes law. A perfect example is use of mobile phone use while driving you now get three points as the law has now been introduced. Yet before,,, that loads of people used to drive using a mobile.

As mentioned before just becuase ukpsf guildlines and touraments ban ramping its not law. There is a difference. And to answer the people out there why would you want to? Because you can. That doesnt mean i ramp for the record.

The question i would ask is why a cap didnt come in when guns were say at 8bps or 10bps or even 12bps , when suddenly they say 15bps is faster enough. I am guessing the guys who had the faster markers eg everyone else is on 10bps and a guy has a 14bps marker won more. Why not say the cap at 30bps? why becuase we like green trees probably!!!!!

Mind you at 30bps paying £7 a hundred that would earn a site a lot of dough:p :p :p :p jok

Probably time to close this thread as we wont get an answer from those who approve and an answer from those that disapprove of ramping. Until a court case happens to change the grey area it could go either way? odds on against, until then keep the faith or the ramp:rolleyes::rolleyes:
 

Gee Tee

1/2 man - 1/2 pogo stick
Mar 21, 2007
3,172
786
148
Dartford, UK
Look at it from the victims point of view?

Regardless of laws, rules or recommendations it all comes down to attitude, and how selfish you want to be. If your attitude is "I want to shoot full auto and sod the rules" - take a second think of the guy on the receiving end of your paint.

Let me give you an example...

You move up the field thinking you are clear, when suddenly a newbie pops up from a barricade less than 10 feet away, and on reflex you let rip at full auto into the guys face. He takes at least 20 balls in the skull before you can take your finger off the trigger, and ends up being taken to hospital. You later find out the guy was out of paint & gas, and just going to walk off the field when you lit him up.

Ok...

So the poor guy signed a disclaimer at the start of the day, but that's based on the site being run within rules. The site rules and insurance clearly stated that full auto wasn't allowed (which you ignored) leaving them open to prosecution by the HSE. Also you and/or the site could be sued for personal injury by the guy you put in hospital.

Organisations like the UKPSF can help us stay the right side of the law, but it needs players & sites to abide by the recommendations it makes. Scotland banned paintballing some years ago. I've been playing since 1987 in the UK and want to carry on doing so. If paintball ihere got enough bad PR due to idiots, more concerned about ROF than breaking rules we are in trouble.
 

Russell Smith

The Paintball Association
Well I am not sure if people don't want to read what has been said or cannot understand the Queens English, so I will try again and add a little bit of background and see if that helps it along.

Ramping/Assisted fire modes.

The Paintball Association approached the Home Office via our friends at the UKPSF to clarify any legal concerns they may have had on the solution we had to stop the advantage some (most) electronic guns had over others, It seemed obvious to me that guns were not shooting in semi mode and electronic assistance was in use if the user choose to believe it or not.

During the PA's development of this solution I was in contact with all the major manufacturers of tournament guns and and also the PSP, NPPL and the Millennium Series.
The PSP had already made a decision that it was going to introduce new rules the following season to enforce compulsory head Armour because they could not see a workable solution to an increasing problem, some of you may remember those experimental goggle sets that had cranial protection built in.

The NPPL was confident that their robot it had developed would detect any cheating software.
The Millennium Series wanted to see what the Americans did and would follow them.
The figure of fifteen balls per second was because of a poll on these very forums when I asked players what they truly thought they shot at and we even had a little experiment for them to take part in to help achieve a true reading.

A lot of talk was that top end competitions would supply sealed boards for use during the events, a great idea in principal, but so was communism, and just like Stalin doomed to failure because some! would get a better "sealed" board than others.
The manufacturers viewpoint was tell us what we have to do and it can be done, but a few resisted because they liked saying "our gun can fire at X balls per second" even if the proof was out saying human fingers couldn't.
A few most notably Planet provided lots of technical information that we could use.
We asked the Home Office on their viewpoint on the law as it pertained to paintball because a lot of so called law was just bull**** and was just crossed over from other stuff (like shooting)some people knew about so it must be right.

We believed we should not be grouped with "gun" users just because we used one and the Home Office agreed, and it ended up with paintball guns being classified as a TOY.
It was quick to point out that only a court of law could make a final decision but courts of law also look for guidance from the Home office.
So we was in the same boat as a guy selling and using water pistols and if that product shot one pint or one gallon of water a minute it was still a water pistol and still a toy.
So we had the clarification that we wanted, all modes were legal. Then we had to find a way to police what we wanted to use or it would have been a waste of time, I found it with the PACT sports timer. Ourselves and the PSP checked them out and found they worked a treat, I went to the States to meet the PSP to workout how the rule should be written and agreed to use the same mode.

The Millennium Series changed the mode slightly but still kept the same cap in place.
Americans being Americans did not like the two line rule I wanted to use and made it into four pages but it was there, in writing and in use, nobody had to use the goggle systems they had started to make and the cheats lost their advantage overnight (as long as they didn't play in the NPPL).

So to make it clear to those who still want to tie us up with UK gun law, water pistols are not controlled by that and neither are we.:)

If an event wanted to use uncapped fully auto - legally it could, but I believe it would be unwise.
Capped fully auto is no different to allowing ramping it just saves on your fingers


Russ
 

icejohn

Member
Sep 24, 2006
85
0
16
tx Russell Smith for clarification on the legal bit.

tx Russell Smith for clarification on the legal bit.

Seems you really you know your stuff tx for the input. I can see now why the 15bps cap has come about. In essence from a health and safety point of view i agree with it.

As to using "assisted modes" whatever those might be full auto or burst etc whatever, so long as they are under 15bps it would seem to be allowed tx for clarifying that. Only personal views come into it, and the site's view on their own site rules.

Since you know alot what would be your thoughts for example a team tournament play when say one player is left verus 3 others on the opposite team. They all open open up on him potentially 15bps x3 is 40plus balls a second flying in. Even the situation of a player 2 on 1 means two streams of paint at 30bps. I would say that normally its one or two balls on the barrel or hopper and you put your hand up and walk out. the situation exists thought that you could catch an aweful lot of paint.:( :eek: I guess this sinero is probably for another thread.

Alot of people seem to have 2 opinions one =being how fast a marker can shoot eg ball per second with refernece health and safety =and the other weither the marker can shoot full auto (automatically assumeing that mode is unsafe =not true). Example a old (full auto) marker that could only do 8 balls a sec verus the latest ego on semi that can do 15 bps depending on the player. :)