"The Air Gun as a Serious Weapon" by H Marks

[harvey_s]

I have to disagree with you, my friend. I've just eaten my dinner and there's no way the knife I used was a weapon.

Airguns may look like weapons, but that doesn't mean they are weapons, although it certainly suits some people to blur the distinction.

A match airgun is not designed to cause bodily harm or damage to anything other than a paper target.

Whether a device used to kill small mammals and birds can ever be classified as a weapon (assuming we are not talking about a Girandoni) is open for debate. The word is more properly reserved for human targets.

An airgun has sufficient power to result in the death of a child as has sadly been proven on more than one occasion.
Therefore I would argue that they must be regarded as weapons irrespective of any intent.
Knives are similarly categorised.
Cutlery and match airguns are merely derivitaves of their primary functions - but the connection is still there and they could instantly be reverted in the wrong hands.