My grinding gears...

Hi, not a lot has been happening lately so that explains the lack of blog activity, well I mean, how can I top my visit to the Science Museum in London the other week. Seriously how many security alerts do you want?

I was going to do a "Cooking with Ed" entry the other day, but thanks to me setting an incorrect macro setting on my camera and an awkward viewing angle most of the shots where blurred. So no blog, a pity really as the "easy chilli beef" is efin amazing. I'll probably do it again in about a month.

I is up here in the "grim north" for a couple of weeks while F and the girls visit her mum in Italy. And seeing as he found a shop in Birkenhead that sells Airsoft guns and now that I also know where it is there is every opportunity that Merseyside Metropolitan Police' SO19 will be paying us a visit in the near future. And here's food for thought, since my appearance in that gun heavy pantomime at the science museum, I am now on the UK's police intelligence computer, it's a system that isn't open to any copper it's for the "intelligence" community. But rest assured dear reader, I have nothing to fear from the police as I am neither a foreign national, overtly religious or political and I certainly do not have a tan.

And now for the bit that grinds my gears.

The Violent Crimes Reduction Act
This hastily written and badly worded waste of paper has airsoft fans now dumped in between Violent drunken yobs, people who sell booze to minors and football hooligans.
Basically it has now "criminalised" anyone who owns and uses an airsoft gun. OK the community hasn't helped itself by 'demanding' realistic weapons from the makers, so that once a week they can dress up like soldiers and sow large amounts of 6mm BB's across large areas of the country or in enclosed arenas.
The government's thoughts behind this was to remove "realistic imitation firearms" {direct quote from the white paper} (the governments new term for non lethal airsoft toys ) from the hands of criminals. OK, fine, just one small problem that they fail to mention, real firearms are cheaper to buy "from some bloke down the pub" than a toy that we will soon have to register to have as honest men and women. And when the criminal element are using more real guns things will get worse. Look at it this way, a yob with a BB gun holds up a petrol station, if it all goes horribly wrong for him he runs away. Now the yob is forced to borrow a pals real gun, things go wrong for him, he squeezes the trigger. Now things have gotten worse for everyone.
If you are of the underclass/careerer criminal then getting a real gun is not too hard (anywhere in the UK), hell the media delight in getting them and doing big exposé's about the fact, when there is nothing better to report about of course.
Airsoft in this country was until recently a loose collection of BB nuts who chatted over the internet, shot their friends (with non lethal plastic balls) and generally had a lot of fun in the process. Now they are forced to become an organised and coherent body, who are for the moment, self regulating. Very bad things happen to groups who grow too big, the bureaucracy that is set up to serve and facilitate the group or body, becomes a monster with a life and a will of it's own and this life and will will eventually come to odds with it's creator. Empires rise but they only fall when the bureaucracy becomes self serving. There are members of the House that know this and have forced the airsoft community to do what it had to do to protect itself. I predict the death or complete outlawing of airsoft in this country within three years, lets wait and see.
Gun crime in this country is on the decline, we have the lowest gun crime (related death) in the world and yet some harmless enthusiasts are all going to suffer for the few, the few being the people with real guns committing real crime, whom the police cannot find. The honest man stands in the light and can be seen, the dishonest man will hide in the shadows, who will the farces of law and order see first?

I'd have to "willingly" give this up, that's not right.
To quote mister Heston.
"From my cold dead hands!"



PS
As you could see I had one of my pistols (I have two) on the table for a photo. What you didn't see was the gas canister at the other end of the table, well I've been buzzed for the last time by this mozzie.
I put a quick squirt of gas in the mag, no BB and stunned the mozzie with one shot at close range, I then de-gassed the mag and squished the mozzie with my index finger and thumb.
Hurrah for airsoft.