Whatever the case may be, it’s hard to see how any of this actually makes anybody safer, while it’s easy to see how it creates confusion, uncertainty, and a chilling effect for anybody who desires to exercise what shrinking sphere of “gun-related” conduct remains legal. A statement SAPOL provided to The Guardian insisted, “Nerf Blasters are toys and there is no requirement to register any model of nerf blaster.” South Australian police are now backpedaling on the interpretation of the law given to Phillips. The $35 fee they charged appears to be about twice the retail price of the toy in Australia.
Nerf Mega Bigshock owner Brad Phillips told 7 News Australia, “I asked SAPOL (SA Police) whether I’d have to register it and they said yes I would.” Phillips noted he then dutifully took his Nerf gun to the Gawler police station, which completed the necessary formalities to render it legal, which included etching a serial number into the plastic. Local news reports note that this has led to concerns these Nerf guns are also regulated under the state’s firearms laws, requiring owners to have them licensed and registered with local authorities. With their cartoonish designs, prominent logos, bright colors, and sometimes translucent parts, they are easily and instantly distinguishable from real firearms.īut some Australian skirmish enthusiasts discovered that certain models of Nerf guns can fire gel pellets without modification. Nerf guns are popular toys that expel harmless foam darts or disks.
Now, it seems, even Nerf guns may be implicated by South Australia’s bizarre and repressive “exercise in common sense.”
SAPOL, however, admitted that their own estimates put the number of gel blasters circulating in the state at 62,000, while retailers estimated the true figure to be 350,000. Residents who already owned gel blasters applied for a total of 460 new “firearms” licenses for them, as well as 136 variations to existing licenses. The South Australian police (SAPOL) reported that 3,882 “gel blaster firearms” were surrendered during the amnesty period. Use was also limited to “licenced venues.” This was, according to a South Australian police official, “common sense.”
Current owners were given six months to surrender their gel blasters or obtain a “firearms” license for them. When this led skirmish sport enthusiasts to adopt the even milder alternative of “gel blasters,” the state of South Australia passed a 2020 law to ensure they, too, came under the law’s authority. It was also, as gun controllers like to say, only the “first step.” Later expansions would eventually encompass non-firearms like paintball guns. There, firearm ownership requires a permit, which in turn requires the applicant to specify a “genuine reason.” The law further specifies that “personal protection is not a genuine reason for owning, possessing or using a firearm.” This, according to the politician most responsible for the 1996 scheme that imposed these requirements, was “an exercise in common sense." What’s in is the term “common sense.” Thus, when candidate Joe Biden set forth the most sweeping, prohibitory gun control agenda America had ever seen from a presidential contender, he made sure to characterize the proposals merely as “common-sense gun safety policies.”Īnd so it is in Australia. But it’s gauche to be too blatant about it. The repression itself is fine, even necessary, of course.
In other words, when you actually are trying to oppress people, you certainly don’t want to talk about it openly. True, he admitted, “It’s accurate: The legislation in question entails more government control over who can purchase guns and when and how.” But for those actively seeking to impose such “control” over their fellow citizens, the language is “off key” and “unhelpful.” As a writer for the New York Times recently explained, the word “control” has a “ring of repression” to it. We all know that among modern firearm prohibitionists, the term “gun control” is out.