Customs Seizes Toy Guns in Washington State

Several news outlets including The News Tribune are reporting that customs officials seized “30 machine guns at the Port of Tacoma.” We’re following up on this for a few reasons. The first is that these guns were copies of M-4 assault rifles, which were actually seized in October of last year. We bring this up because it serves as ammo – no pun intended – to anyone who says that all guns used by criminals must have been legal. Clearly this is further proof that guns can, and likely will continue to be, smuggled into the United States.

But what is really odd is that the Customs & Border Protection is claiming that while these were “the same size, weight and look of the M-4″ these were listed as toy guns. The News Tribune noted:

“On Jan. 25, the ATF submitted its report. It found ‘that in their imported condition the rifles were tooled to shoot plastic balls. However, replacement of internal components with original machine-gun components could be accomplished within a short period of time, thus rendering the rifles capable of firing live ammunition,’ the Customs news release said.”

“Shoot plastic balls” seems to imply to us that these may be Air Soft guns, as not real guns at all. While these lacked the typical orange tips required for such guns, we should note that this is an American law and isn’t follow overseas. Likewise, there is a market for “non-guns” or “counterfeits” as well – as in guns that look the part but can’t be made to fire. Note our choice of words: “can’t be made to fire.”

We’d like to know how any “weapon” that is either not really a gun, or is meant to “shoot plastic balls” can be converted in what ATF claims to be a “short period of time?” Seriously?

What is more confusing is that according to the ATF, a machine gun is a machine gun if it has a receiver. Essentially a full-auto receiver is what makes a gun a machine gun, so do these guns have such a receiver? Otherwise, we can’t understand what the problem with these seized toys could be… unless the ATF is looking to start an Air Soft team cheaply!

Note to the ATF: If it looks like a duck, is the same size as a duck, but is made of wood it is called a decoy, but it isn’t a duck! Keep that in mind when you look to seize something that looks like a gun, feels like a gun but doesn’t shoot REAL BULLETS like a real gun!