Most people above a certain age associate pneumatic guns with the Daisy BB guns of our youth, guns that had little power and a range of perhaps 50 feet. The current generation of pneumatic guns makes the Daisy BB gun look like a pop gun.
According to Chief Mark Sisson of the Christiansburg Police Department, the new pneumatic guns “are capable of carrying a projectile much farther and much faster and are now designed to look like real guns, putting the town’s police officers in harm’s way.”
They would also put town residents at risk. Many of the higher-powered pneumatic guns sound similar to regular gunshots, which means neighbors may not be able to distinguish one from the other.
High-powered assault air guns now, apparently. So the old Red Ryder didn’t look like a real gun unless you were up close? Could have fooled me. I should also note there’s a pretty good Second Amendment case to be made that air guns are protected just as much as powder guns.
Is there anything that can’t be banned in the name of “officer safety”?
Really, are the air rifles going to penetrate a Class II vest? I know several people who live in urban areas and own pellet guns. Mostly because it’s the only legal way they have to kill rats.
Journalists who write about the “current generation” of air guns being incomparably more powerful may need a history lesson. If an air gun like Girandoni air rifle (.46 caliber ball, 20-ball magazine) wasn’t “designed to look like real guns”, and the “current generation” ones are …
I agree there’s no reason to ban air rifles, regardless of their power. That said, I’ve always been extremely annoyed by the small percentage of people who will buy one, hand it to their kids and say “have fun” without any training, safety or even advice about what are and aren’t justified targets. Giving a kid one of these without first making them understand their responsibility in using it lays a poor foundation for their future gun ownership.
Air guns as legit weapons go back to the early 19th century. The entire Austrian army and Lewis and Clark had repeating air rifles powered by large air tanks. Girandoni was the name of the rifle design. It could hit someone 100m away and it could fire something like 20+ rounds a minute, which was incredible back then.
Anyway, air rifles are clearly weapons.
Jim,
The author of the article, along with the PD Chief he interviewed are trying to create an impression that modern air rifles are somehow more powerful and dangerous than the air rifles of the past, and that therefore they need to be regulated more strictly.
Girandoni, as I already commented earlier, is actually a counter-argument to them, showing that modern air rifles are not more powerful, and therefore the argumentation of the article is rather silly and ignorant.
As for air rifle being a weapon – sure. So is a kitchen knife. Or a boulder, or a tree branch. Not sure what point you were trying to make there :)