[Cartman]

Thorpe and Gooderman do have some application today as mentioned in most versions of Archbold (and other publications) but the relevance is not as absolute as it once was due to changes in statute. I described this position earlier on posts numbers 36 and 38 respectively. My position is not at odds with Archbold, in fact as I use it every day, I did check it before I started posting ! The main reason that they have not been overturned is that the circumstances that gave rise to them no longer exist as I described above. Remember that Thorpe deemed a CO2 weapon that was lethal to be a s1 firearm as the 1968 act made no provision for a CO2 weapon. The act does now so that part of the judgement is now defunct as a CO2 weapon is now considered to be an airweapon and therefore exepmt.

I would also point out that (as I did in post #50) the issue of lethality is largely irrelevant for the discussion at point - namely is a powerful AEG subject to s1 or s5 of the 1968 Act. Lethality is always going to be a question of fact and not law (until the law changes), although some are obvious - a Glock 22 is obviously lethal for instance.

A lethal air weapon will be a firearm but it is still NOT subject to section 1 or 5 unless it is specially dangerous - no exceptions. As AEG's are not specially dangerous, the most that an AEG can be is a firearm/airgun that must be sold by a RFD - they are not subject to licensing.

As for the VCRA, there were many discussions that were made around it when it was a bill. A RIF is explicitly and clearly defined in law, leaving little for interpretation. Where something is defined in law it is a question of law and not a question of fact. As such, an offence under section 36 must meet the points to prove, namely that the weapon is a RIF. Leaving everything else aside, for something to be a RIF, the points to prove that the law requires are :-

1. It has an appearance that is so realistic as to make it indistinguishable, for all practical purposes, from a real firearm
2. It is neither a de-activated firearm nor itself an antique
3. It can be only be determined to be fake if an expert examines it or an attempt is made to load it

There only point of fact would be the expert's report stating that it was realistic which currently require a statement from an Authorised Firearms Officer.

You may well be right on the fact that a lethal air weapon (irrespective of the power) is not covered by the 2006 Act on the basis that if an airweapon is powerful enough to be lethal then it is a firearm and therefore cannot, by definition, be an imitation firearm. This would be a point that needs to be tested in court though as it is clearly an oversight on the part of the drafters. The argument could be made that an M4 shooting at 600fps is lethal but it has the appearance of being a firearm (as in a real M4)and so the court could take the view that it is an airgun that is an imitation of a proper firearm. The courts could go either way on this one.

In reality it is not something that would cause us too much trouble, but it is a very interesting intellectual argument and not one I had thought about.

As a final note, I cannot stress enough that there is no police or CPS limit of 1J whereby something becomes lethal. It is always a question of fact that depends on the circumstances. Consider a tennis ball launcher with a barrel attached for accuracy. I am not sure if such a thing exists, but it would be easy to make and serves my purposes for an example. A tennis ball weighs around 58g which is 300 times heavier than a .2g bb and they fire at around 100fps. This gives an energy of around 35J. You would not consider such a machine lethal though.... As such, each thing must be considered on their own merits.

This post has been edited by Cartman: 21 April 2010 - 21:55

[Paddy]

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