Hopefully this story from Scotsman.com will just turn out to be more of a scare with no permanent or blanket bans coming from it; if tighter restrictions are placed on such items there could well be severe problems for companies in Airsoft related sectors (cheers go to Chris for the heads up).
Royal Mail Calls for Guns to Be Banned from Post:
The Royal Mail tonight called for a ban on the posting of firearms because of the disruption caused when a sporting or replica gun or other weapon is discovered in sorting offices.
Mail centres have been evacuated several times this year because of the discovery of replica weapons, including a gun and a grenade.
The postal group said the ban should apply to the delivery of sporting and replica firearms, munitions and ordnance.
Parcelforce and other parcels firms could continue to carry firearms, the Royal Mail suggested.
A total of 352 firearms and 254 items containing ammunition were handled by the Royal Mail over the past year.
Industry regulator Postcomm said it will consult on the proposal before making a decision next year. Alan Jones, PA Industrial Correspondent
(Scotsman.com)
The point has to be made that a replica is not necessarily a Firearm, so the article isn’t exactly accurate in its terminology. This does tend to come across as a financial move from RoyalMail (RM), as evacuations cause lost revenue in an already troubled sector. Obviously RM would prefer it if everything posted was easy to process and could never be construed to be a threat of any form. Perhaps better organisation is needed at RM? At the moment RM handle certain international postal contracts (such as some EMS/SAL post), and restrictions would be difficult if not impossible to enforce upon inbound foreign parcels. It’s a dead on certainty that even with a complete ban on such shaped items, suspect parcels will always be found, and quite possibly in the same numbers as before such a ban was put into place. Whatever is said about the matter it’s a certainty that something needs to be done to resolve the situation.
