Airsoft and UK law: what the rules actually say
Most of what is written about airsoft law online muddles two separate questions together, then adds a database that does not appear in the legislation at all. Here is what the law says, with the sections, so you can read it yourself. This is a plain-words summary and not legal advice.
Is an airsoft gun a firearm?
Usually not. Section 57A of the Firearms Act 1968 says that an airsoft gun is not to be regarded as a firearm for the purposes of that Act.
To qualify it has to be a barrelled weapon designed to discharge only a small plastic missile, and it must not be capable of discharging a missile above the permitted muzzle energy. That permitted level is 1.3 joules for a weapon that can fire successive missiles without repeated pressure on the trigger, and 2.5 joules in any other case. A small plastic missile means a spherical ball, made wholly or partly of plastics, no more than 8 millimetres in diameter.
Above those energies it is not an airsoft gun in law, and the Firearms Act applies to it in full.
Is it illegal to own a realistic imitation?
No. Section 36 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 makes it an offence to manufacture a realistic imitation firearm, to modify an imitation firearm so that it becomes one, to sell one, or to bring one into Great Britain.
Possession is not on that list. There is no licence to own one and nothing to apply for.
Then why do shops ask you to prove you play?
Because the offence in section 36 is the seller's, and so is the defence. The retailer is not checking your paperwork. They are assembling their own.
Section 37 lists the defences as enacted: the purposes of a museum or gallery, theatrical performances and rehearsals for them, the production of films, the production of television programmes, the organisation and holding of historical re-enactments, and functions a person has in the service of the Crown.
Airsoft is not in that list. It arrives in the 2007 Regulations, which add a defence where the conduct was for the purpose only of making the imitation available for permitted activities for which public liability insurance is held against liabilities to third parties. Regulation 2 defines permitted activities as the acting out of military or law enforcement scenarios for the purposes of recreation, and says third parties includes participants, spectators and members of the public.
The legislation never uses the word airsoft. The insurance, and the organised game it covers, is the thing the law actually cares about.
UKARA is not a licence
UKARA appears nowhere in the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 or in the 2007 Regulations. It is a private database run by the airsoft retail trade.
It exists because the Regulations hand a seller a defence without telling them what evidence to keep. Site membership with public liability insurance behind it is the substance; UKARA is one tidy way for a shop to record that it checked. You are not breaking any law by not being on it, and being on it is not permission to do anything.
Two-tone, and the 51% that is not in the law
The Regulations say when a size or a colour counts as unrealistic, and they are a great deal shorter than the folklore.
Regulation 6: a size is unrealistic only if the imitation is smaller than 38 millimetres high and 70 millimetres long.
Regulation 7: a colour is unrealistic only if it is bright red, bright orange, bright yellow, bright green, bright pink, bright purple or bright blue, or if the imitation is made of transparent material.
Note what is absent. There is no proportion and no percentage anywhere in regulation 7. The 51 per cent bright colour figure that everybody quotes is trade practice, not a number in these Regulations.
Carrying it about is a different law again
Section 19 of the Firearms Act 1968 makes it an offence to have an imitation firearm with you in a public place without lawful authority or reasonable excuse, and the Act puts the proof of that excuse on you.
Section 36 is about selling; section 19 is about carrying, and the airsoft exception in section 57A does not help here, because something that is not a firearm can still be an imitation firearm. In practice: in a bag, to and from a game, is the ordinary answer. Slung over a shoulder on the walk to the shops is not.
None of this applies to the kit
Worth saying plainly, because it is the question we are asked most. A plate carrier is not an imitation firearm. Neither is a pouch, a helmet, a set of webbing, a holster, a dump pouch or a pair of boots.
Sections 36 to 38 are about imitation firearms and nothing else, so none of the above touches anything in the departments on this site. There is nothing to prove and nothing to register in order to buy a pouch.
Questions
- Do I need a UKARA registration to buy airsoft kit?
- No. UKARA is a private trade database, not a legal requirement, and it is not mentioned anywhere in the legislation. For vests, pouches, helmets and webbing it is irrelevant either way, because none of those is an imitation firearm.
- What is the airsoft muzzle energy limit in the UK?
- 1.3 joules for a gun that can fire successive missiles without repeated pressure on the trigger, and 2.5 joules in any other case, under section 57A of the Firearms Act 1968. Above that it is not an airsoft gun in law.
- Is it illegal to own a realistic imitation firearm in the UK?
- Section 36 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 covers manufacture, modification, sale and import. Possession is not an offence under it, and there is no licence to own one.
- Is the 51% bright colour rule real?
- Not as a figure in law. Regulation 7 of the 2007 Regulations names seven bright colours and transparency, and sets no proportion at all. The 51 per cent figure is trade practice.
- What size counts as too small to be realistic?
- Under regulation 6, a size is unrealistic only if the imitation is smaller than 38 millimetres high and 70 millimetres long.
- Do I need anything to buy a vest, pouch or helmet?
- No. The imitation firearm rules in sections 36 to 38 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 apply to imitation firearms and to nothing else, so they do not touch load-bearing kit.
Sources
- Firearms Act 1968, section 57A - airsoft exception
- Firearms Act 1968, section 19 - imitation firearm in a public place
- Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, section 36
- Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006, section 37 - defences
- The Violent Crime Reduction Act 2006 (Realistic Imitation Firearms) Regulations 2007
Written by the person who sorts the stock, not by a copywriter. Corrections are welcome at [email protected].