The firearms act states "any accessory designed or adapted to diminish the noise or flash caused by firing the weapon" (weapon being in this instance anything producing over one joule of energy). Therefore surely any moderator designed with the structural integrity to withstand the pressure from anything above an air rifle should be classed as a firearm in it's own right?
By that reckoning all mods should always be S1 items.
The Act actually says 'any accessory
to any such weapon designed or adapted...', where 'any such weapon' refers to an S1 firearm. A lot of folk seem to think the wording has been decided on at random, but the literal interpretation of that makes sense - namely that a thing that is 'an accessory to' another thing is
actually attached to it, rather than just something which
could potentially be attached to it.
Does that make sense?
All airgun mods will work on most S1 airguns - yet they are not of themselves S1 items. A mod designed for a 9.3mm c/f rifle might be just the thing for a 9mm garden-gun - so if it were fitted to the S2 garden-gun it would very clearly in law
not be a S1 item. How then could it be an S1 item
before it were fitted to the garden-gun?
If I took the mod off my 9.3x64 rifle and fitted it to the garden-gun, what is the mod then? Well, it clearly changes from being an S1 item while it is attached to (i.e. an accessory to) the S1 rifle - but at what point? Attached to the garden-gun it is in law very clearly
not a S1 item, as a sound-moderating accessory to a S2 firearm is clearly not subject to any control. It therefore seems bizarrre to imagine that once taken off the S1 rifle and lying by iteself on the bench it remains subject to S1 control, doesn't it? Bizarre that the S1-status inert steel baffle-tube should loose its S1 status by its being picked up off the bench being screwed onto a little shotgun?
Bizarre indeed! The only sensible explanation is that its S1 status is the result of its being 'an accessory to' a S1 firearm, and that a thing is only 'an accessory to' a S1 firearm is it is
actually attached to it.
There are, I think, bits of case-law that have made a slight horlicks of this concept - but I think if push came to shove the above understanding of what is meant by 'an accessory to' is the only one that explains why all the owners of airgun mods in the country are not in unlawful possession of S1 items - and, indeed, why I am not in unlawful possession of too many .22LR mods myself - as all the mods, for S1 rifles and airguns, with 1/2"UNF threads will in fact fit the .22LR - yet I have only one such mod 'on ticket'. That works out because I can only make one mod 'an accessory to' my .22LR at any one time - and that mod is at that time the mod on my ticket for the .22LR.
