http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/04/23/police-nyu-student-with-arsenal-of-imitation-assault-weapons-arrested/?hpt=ju_bn4Reading over this article and looking at the pictures of the student, I'll say he was a pretty idiotic guy and it's illegal to have airsoft guns in New York City in the first place. So I have zero complaints about him being arrested for it (though I may have my own complaints about banning airsoft guns in the first place...)
My problem here is the article. Some choice quotes:
An NYU student was arrested Monday for allegedly building realistic looking air rifles in his dorm room.
Legally and in practice, there's a HUGE difference between airsoft guns and "air guns." Airsoft guns specifically fire lightweight plastic pellets at low velocities, and thousands of people across the United States, including children, are regularly shot by them. You would either need to remove your eye protection or intentionally crank up your gun to an unsafe velocity and fire it at an unsafe distance to even cause a minor flesh wound. An "air gun", in the common and legal definitions, fires a metal projectile at much higher speeds and definitely risks injury. My own air rifle could likely penetrate several inches into a person's body at close range, which is why I don't carelessly fire it all over the place.
“It’s a little scary. I didn’t even know the person was living in our building,” said NYU senior Nicole Bufis. “I figured it was somewhere else.”
Are you kidding? It's scary that someone plays airsoft?
NYU released a statement about the incident Tuesday evening. The university said even though the gun was an airsoft rifle and “did not pose the kind of lethal danger associated with firearms… it is the case that these type of pellet guns can cause significant injury.”
Well, yeah. If you go up to someone who has no eye protection, shove the barrel against their bare eyeball, and pull the trigger. Almost every injure among airsofters is self-inflicted, things like falling and tripping.
Air rifles fire pellets through compressed air and have a range of up to 300 feet, according to published reports. Though they are designed to look like actual firearms, the air rifles only cause flesh wounds at close range.
Noooo. Again, airsoft guns
don't cause flesh wounds. I've seen BBs actually cause bloody injury, but those were usually guns cranked up beyond field limits and fired at unsafe ranges. You already have to be violating regulations to cause injury.
The whole point of this is that I utterly
despite how this was being reported. It's being reported as if the student was building dangerous weapons and they've got sensationalist quotes of classmates who are apparently terrified of the thought. It's drumming up fear over something nobody should be scared about, and bending the truth or using manipulative language to give people a reason to be scared. It's horrible reporting.