EXCLUSIVE: Toy Gun Sold in U.S. Can Easily be Converted to the Real Thing..

fox news ^ | may 6 2010 | By Diane Macedo

[OL Hickory]

A FoxNews.com investigation reveals that a popular recreational pellet gun can be converted easily to a real semi-automatic weapon. And while the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is already aware of the issue, these “toys” -- new, top-of-the-line airsoft rifles -- continue to be sold throughout the country

[OL Hickory]

Any Body else think this is just overreaching?

[mrmeyer]

If it can be done, I’d like to see a demonstration cause I’m not buying it. Smells like B.S. to me.

[JoeProBono]

[mylife]

Even Fox is regurgitating the BS story. Wow!

[TSgt]

I would be afraid to fire more than one shell through the thin receiver and barrel.

[Kenny Bunk]

It is absolutely possible to fire a .223 round from an Airsoft rifle, with a bit of jiggery-pokery, of course..

However, that would be the first and last round fired, and it is quite possible that the shooter would lose a digit, an eye, or worse.

I would say that your bullshiite detector is in working order.

[KarlInOhio]

And though federal law has since defined a gun’s receiver as the part “which provides housing for the hammer, bolt, breechblock and firing mechanism,” Savage says the bureau has continued to mark and regulate the lower part of the AR-15 to avoid confusion.

So is this a problem with the Airsoft or with the AR-15 where the serial numbered "receiver" isn't all that important of part, while the working bits and the barrel can be bought as repair parts instead of them being counted as the soul of the rifle?

[DBrow]

An airsoft gun with SS barrel and at least aluminum receiver, maybe. But the airsoft guns I have seen are mostly polymer with some springs.

Is this the new Saturday night Special, another fictional threat that Congress must address with real laws?

[DBrow]

“The reason the lower half of the AR-15 is the part with the serial number, and thus classified as the receiver, is that when the gun was created it was up to the manufacturer to choose the location of the gun’s serial number, he said. Because the bottom of the gun has a flat surface, it was the easiest to mark.”

And all this time I thought it was because it held the trigger, sear, hammer, and safety, plus held the mag, and had the barrel attachment!

So if this is true, then what about ANY rifle or shotgun, where “all the pressure” is in the barrel, but the barrel has no SS#?

[Paine in the Neck]

...I’d like to see a demonstration...

Exactly. Do it. Show me or shut up.

[magslinger]

...I’d like to see a demonstration...
Exactly. Do it. Show me or shut up.

And don't put it on that test bed. Fire it yourself.

[pyx]

My advice is; DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FIRE ANY REAL ROUND FROM A TOY GUN.

The pressure from an AR-15 round would create an explosion of plastic shrapnel in plastic toy guns like the AirSoft. For FOX to perpetuate this story is beyond stupid.

[txroadkill]

Complete

 

[The Great RJ]

This is so much BS I had to pull up my pant legs. While in theory you might get off a round that would likely be the first and last one and your chances of hitting something would be laughable. Reminds me of the old “zip guns” in the 1950s supposedly made from a piece of car antenna and a 22 round...a pretty hollow threat.

[DBrow]

I think they are saying you take the airsoft “receiver” and mount an AR upper to it.

‘Course, they also say you could make the receiver out of cardboard...

[Michael Barnes]

Absolute bullcrap. My boys have these things (one of them has the exact model in this article). No way those things can pull it off. The breach would never survive one round.

Now, the BB's on the other hand hurt like hell!! ;-)

[Wings-n-Wind]

Any Body else think this is just overreaching?

***************

Airsoft toys are made of PLASTIC -- (pretty cheap stuff)

The heat and kinetic energy of 1 round would warp the "barrel" -- assuming a bullet made it to the end before tumbling or fragmenting.

I am reminded of inmates.... and asylums....

JMHO....

[Still Thinking]

If this is the case from several months ago, it's an airsoft importer in the Pacific Northwest, and no, they cannot be "easily" or even possibly converted to real guns. ATF made that claim, and it appears in retrospect that they may have done so with the intention of covering up their own incompetence in seizing airsoft guns thinking they were real rifles. The agent making the claim appeared on the local news and actually inserted the mag backwards when demoing.

I can't believe Fox is running this as a credible story, unless they're doing it as thinly disguised satire to expose the incompetence and duplicity of the ATF.

AND, as if all that weren't enough, even if this were true and they could be converted into weapons, they're not as convertible as say, making an AR-15 into an M-16, and even ATF doesn't claim they can seize AR-15's on that basis. More evidence that this is a hastily fielded cover-up so they don't have to say "Oops, we're so incompetent we can't tell airsoft from real guns".

[Still Thinking]

But the airsoft guns I have seen are mostly polymer with some springs.

And electric motors. How are THOSE going to deal with real cartridges?