Talk:Potato cannon legality

United Kingdom

I'm a little unclear about this. Why exactly are Section 1 Firearms not subject to licensing laws?

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This line is clearly incorrect: "Pneumatic spud guns with projectile energy greater than 4 joules (3 ft·lbf) are classified as section 1 firearms and don't require a license."

Either it means 'less than 4 joules ...' or it means 'DO require a licence...'

Source?

I have looked through all the UK firearms and offensive weapons law and i do not see one mention of spud guns/potato cannons anywhere. Where exactly are they classified and where does it say they need to be below 3ftlb/4 joules? I would have thought that they would simply fall under air gun legislation, meaing that they could be 12ftlb or under.

Light Air Weapon

When I read the (unsourced) statement that some in the UK would like to have the spud gun reclassed as a "Light Air Weapon," I got curious, so I did a gooogle search to find out what falls in that class right now and how the class is defined, but I couldn't find any information about such a classification. 74.113.172.20 (talk) 03:31, 10 November 2012 (UTC)PvtBuddie

I've just gone ahead and removed that section. I've been unable to find a shred of reference to or evidence for a 4J limit for any projectile in the UK. It's clearly someone's original research or speculation. Rogerborg (talk) 11:46, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Which spud gun?

Can we be clear in this article about whether it is talking about the toy spud or the potato spud? DJ Clayworth (talk) 13:48, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Sweden

I Remeber from news that Swedish police had confiscated one potato cannon with the basis it was firearm and fined the owner. http://nfttu.blogspot.com/2006/02/swedish-potato-guns-that-can-take-down.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.184.83.234 (talk) 09:23, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Canada

Having read through the section of the criminal code pertaining to the definition of a firearm, it is not "152.4 meters per second AND at a muzzle energy exceeding 5.7 Joules" but "152.4 meters per second OR a muzzle energy exceeding 5.7 Joules. Since even a very simple potato gun will easily exceed 5.7 joules of energy, this is a fairly significant distinction. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.71.165.178 (talk) 02:38, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Georgia, Florida, Wisconsin

A cursory review of state laws for Georgia did not indicate any restrictions whatsoever regarding the manufacture, use, and/or sale of spudguns and/or similar devices; a brief (albeit more limited) review of Florida and Wisconsin also did not reveal such laws. If such state laws cannot be shown (via cited reference) than we must remove the incorrect conjecture.AlphaCircle (talk) 20:59, 24 December 2009 (UTC)

California

The article originally stated that combustion spud gun's are illegal in California pursuant to Penal Code section 12303. This code only indicates that possession of destructive devices is illegal and outlines penalties. California's definition of a "destructive device" is given in Penal Code section 12301, and spud guns do not fit the description of any of the listed devices. The closest is under section 12301(a)(1), which reads:

"Any weapon of a caliber greater than 0.60 caliber which fires fixed ammunition"

A potato is not fixed ammunition (ammunition in which the propellant and primer are integrated into the case), so a spud gun does not meet this definition. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.7.115.95 (talk) 04:34, 2 March 2013 (UTC)