[maple_leaf_eh]

"While the revisions appear to grandfather in current owners of vintage military vehicles equipped with weapons, they also appear to require current owners of deactivated weapons permanently mounted to military vehicles to register their vehicles and to add identifying marks to the vehicles’ weapons. In addition, the revisions limit the buying, selling, or trading of military vehicles equipped with active or deactivated weapons within the European Union."

So how is this going to be different than red muzzle caps on Airsoft and Paintball markers? The idea there was to make a quick visual feature that showed the item was deemed a non-firearm.

I understand the pressure to standardize deactivation rules. From what I've read, there have been terrorists and criminals who have bought pieces from the least rigorous jurisdictions and restored them to firing status. No one wants that. Where the regulators lose whatever support they had in the HMV community is when they choose the most scrupulous standard and then decide it isn't tough enough. Vandalizing a precious piece for correctness is hard enough without more layers of compliance.

In Canada there have been several sets of deactivation guidelines, with the latest being plenty tough enough. The fly-in-the-ointment is the older standard pieces are cock and click versus lump of unyielding steel, and command higher prices. Why? Because they are closer to realistic.