Depends on how you want to read it, and is one reason I'd rather not debate it in a court of law.
It must be borne in mind, however, that not all airguns can be classed as "firearms".
It then gives one definition which relates specifically in my mind to airsoft replica's. And looks at the energy with a pellet gun that would be required to be lethal as defined by penetrating...
It also states
the Firearms Act 1968 defines a firearm as a lethal barrelled weapon capable of the discharge of any shot, bullet or other missile.
So to be a fire arm it MUST be lethal barrelled.
Thus, in order to be classed as a firearm, an object must be a weapon, it must have a barrel through which some kind of missile is fired and the effect of the missile on the target must be lethal.
Pretty clear so far.
Lethality is defined as "capable of inflicting a more than trivial injury"—a trivial injury being one in which only superficial damage such as bruising occurs. In essence, if the pellet from a particular gun is capable of penetrating the skin, that gun is a firearm.
now since the paintball is significantly larger than a pellet the energy it can have before penetrating is significantly greater than with a pellet gun.
so lethality depends on the projectile as well as the muzzle energy. with the old syringe test all similar weapons were classed as fire arms. Since they changed the test paintball markers were no longer classes as fire arms.
I don't know about you but in the 11 years of paintball I have played I have NEVER heard of a paintball penetrating someone, even when frozen or rock solid. It only ever creates 'trivial' injuries such as superficial damage and brusing... heck if it did anything else we wouldn't be playing!
Therefore it is NOT a lethal barreled weapon. If it is NOT a lethal barreled weapon it does NOT fit the basic firearm description and thus is NOT a firearm.
That was explained to me by some fire arms inspector at the midlands shooting and training range.
It's still a grey area, but it we can legitimately hold a definition of a marker that means it is NOT a fire arm then lets do it please
manike