British man shot with BB gun

Certain configurations of air rifles are used for hunting small game and for pest control.

The ability to cause significant harm to an adult sized human with one is fairly low, especially from any reasonable distance. However, air rifles are NOT toys. They throw a chunk of metal at good velocities. Our air rifles are treated just like our other firearms - doing so provides a good way for us to teach our children about firearm safety, and at their ages they are supervised with them.

Intentionally shooting someone with an air rifle here is probably harassment and could escalate from there depending upon the circumstances and injuries sustained. However, air rifles are not usually considered deadly weapons around here.

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Originally posted by Darion
Yeah, except this isn't what happened and granted, I'm not 100% familiar with English laws, but I somehow doubt that a maybe-racially-motivated BB gun shooting is synonymous with repeatedly stabbing a soldier with a knife and thus your analogy and its barely veiled appeal to emotion are pretty poor.

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A letter opener isn't really any more of a knife than a bb gun is a gun, I don't think. Though I've never tried stabbing somebody with one, I can't see it functioning on the level of something like a switchblade.

Given that you called the letter opener a knife though, I don't think my "appeal to emotion" was poor at all. You immediately did what you've been complaining about in this thread, by trumping up the weapon involved. That basically proved my point, and thus it's mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_opener

If you stab someone in the stomach with a letter opener, I equate that to being stabbed with a knife because the damage inflicted to the body is very similar given that you end up with a pair of stab wounds.

I contend that, say, if I were to alternate putting a BB gun and a 9mm handgun to the side of your head and pulling the triggers, one would do considerably more damage (being a gunshot wound) than the other (being a minor laceration). See? Not so complicated.