Quote:
Originally Posted by The Saint
Macgyver argues that it's because of some sort of favouritism towards airguns relative to airsoft, apparently on the part of RCMP. I argue that it's not clear if we're dealing with intentional policy cooperation between the RCMP and CITT/CBSA or if we're just dealing with the collision of different agencies' ignorance.
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I'm not sure it's as much favoritism as it is dumb luck. Of all the guns in issue in all the appeals, none of them were in fact capable of shooting at this 407 fps level. So, by the RCMPs standard, they don't cause injury enough to be a firearm.
My problem is with the standard itself. Where's the testing on this? Where's the data? The best I've come across is a sprts injury study from Florida done in 1997 by some sports injury think-tank (if I get ambitious I'll look for it later). If you google BB gun + eye + injury, you'll get all kinds of studies and info. However, this is not the end-all-be-all of data, and the RCMP goes a little overboard in ensuring our safety. Many nations have seem to come to a consensus on 1J as being a safe limit, but the RCMP is at or above 2J (depending on ammo). If they were at the 1J level as Britian, Japan, Italy, etc, you'd see alot more guns capable of being considered firearms, but not replicas.
How many guns out there can (if sent in stock form to the RCMP lab) actually shoot in excess of 407 fps, but under 500 fps with merely the insertion of a battery and some BBs? Not very many (MAX PTWs are the only electric guns that come to mind), so just the luck of the draw says that up until now, the Marui, Western Arms, KSC, etc that have been involved in CITT appeals have not met this minimum performance burden, so the replica classification of those guns was a result.
In Peter Kangs defence though, he did allow 2 guns to get seized, took the appeals process through at least 4 levels of review, retained legal counsel and fought it all the way to the CITT, which took over 5 years from seizure date to hearing. He did present evidence, but his result was still a denied appeal. The CITT is not a court of law, so perhaps the rules of evidence and testimony are a little different there. He had the option to still take it to Federal Court, where he could have maybe had more success, but I understand why he didn't. What would it cost him? Thousands upon thousands. And for what? If he won, it could've opened the gates for guns (at least for a time) as the CBSA would have to bow to a Federal Court decision regarding replicas. It could also have forced policy change at the CFC-level as well. And if that meant we could order all those nice guns from Redwolf directly, how would Kang have benefitted financially from that? All of this at a time when Kang-bashing was all the rage, especially on ASC.
I would have given up as well.
That's the way I understand the situation between the CBSA, the RCMP and the CITT.