Gel ball shooter

Gel blasters, also known as gel guns, gel shooters, gel markers, hydro markers, hydro blasters or gelsoft, are toy guns similar in design to airsoft guns, but the projectiles they shoot are 6–8 mm (0.24–0.31 in) superabsorbent polymer water beads (most commonly sodium polyacrylate, colloquially called water beads, hydrogel balls, gel balls, water bullets or simply gels), which are often sold commercially as moisture retainers for gardening and pot/vase floriculture.

STD-SLR gen 9 toy rifle, powered by gearbox piston
A two gel blasters. The top one is based on HK416 while the below is based on ACR rifle.

Gel blasters are often played in CQB-style shooting skirmishes similar to paintball by squads or local clubs of enthusiasts often referred to as "gelballers", but follows an airsoft-like honor-based gameplay umpiring system. MilSim games involving players wearing camouflage and dump pouches are very popular, while "SpeedGel" players are more casual with team jerseys and often wear paintball masks. In addition to safety gear such as eye protections, the sport is heavily regulated on the field and players must adhere to safety rules.

Design

The general design of gel blasters are very similar to airsoft guns, usually comprising a coil spring-loaded piston air pump, with a T-piece ahead of the pump outlet to feed gel beads. The spring-piston pump is either manually cocked (like a spring-piston gun) or more commonly driven by an electric motor-gearbox assembly powered by batteries (like airsoft automatic electric guns (AEG)). However, unlike the plastic airsoft pellets or the gelatin paintball capsules, the gel beads are very frangible and will simply fragment if any high pressure is introduced, so the propelling pump is small with a very low pressure output. As a result, gel blasters have a much lower muzzle energy, and hence shorter effective range and worse accuracy than most paintball guns, although recently muzzle-mounted frictional "hop-up" devices have been introduced to impart backspin on the gel beads and try increasing the range and precision. This nature of the beads' external and terminal ballistics make them much safer to play with (although protective eyewear is still recommended[1][2]) and very unlikely to cause any property damage. The gel beads are also very cheap, easily transported in packets and only require soaking in water for a few hours prior to playing. Another feature is the ease of cleaning, since the gel beads are made up by water in over 98% of mass and volume, and will break upon impact and simply dehydrate into tiny biodegradable slush powder fragments afterwards.

Originally, gel blasters used paintball-style top-mounted hoppers (often disguised as fake optical sights) that relied on gravity to load the gel beads when shooting, because the water beads were typically too fragile to withstand even the pressure exerted by a follower spring. However, in late 2016, bottom-mounted magazines with inbuilt motors were introduced, which draw power from the main batteries (via contact points at the top) to drive a cogwheel that gently pushed the beads up a feeding tube. This gave a lot more realism than previously and triggered a huge surge in the popularity and market of gel blasters. The recent proliferation of more hardy gel beads on the market has also introduced magazines using the traditional spring follower.

Gas blowback blasters

In early 2020, "Kublai P1", a gas-powered version modelled after the Glock pistol, started to appear on the market.[3] The P1 is essentially the same in design to gas blowback airsoft pistols, and uses refrigerant gas (such as R-134a or HFC-152a) or propane to charge a gas canister built within a spring-follower magazine. The original version is fully polymer, but an upgraded version with metal slide and barrel is available for sale by retailers in Australia.

Accessories

There are a variety of products made and produced to complement gel blasters, which feeds from ordinary gel ball ammunition.

Grenades

Gel grenades are essentially a bottle with an internal spring mechanism. When the safety clip is pulled and the lever is relaxed, a sear mechanism is released and allows three trapdoor-like hatches on the external shell to spread open, followed by the release of three spring-loaded hinged flaps underneath that "flick out" out any gel beads stored within the cavity between the hatches and the flaps, causing a "shower" of gel beads in all directions. The sear can be designed to release in a delayed fashion, or in response to vibrations caused by impacts.

Anti-personnel mine

Gel mines are essentially plastic clamshell containers shaped like the M18 Claymore, with a pair of spring-loaded internal hinged flaps connected end-to-end by a looping piece of canvas. When the mine is loaded, the two flaps are folded down and trapped by the locked-shut clamshell enclosure, and gel beads are stored into the space within the canvas loop via a small feeding window on the front enclosure. The locking mechanism of the clamshell enclosure can be released manually by a tripwire, or by a remote control. When released, the clamshell enclosure opens up, allowing the two spring flaps to flip out like a french door, stretching and flattening the canvas between them, which will launch out all the stored gel beads towards the front direction.

Launchers

In March 2020, a gel blaster version of the M203 grenade launcher is introduced to the Chinese market by MAX SUN, which is designed to mount on the underside of another gel blaster's handguard via a Picatinny rail interface. It uses a rechargeable aluminium gas canister shaped like a 40 mm grenade, whose cap portion has six tubular holes each capable of holding numerous 7mm gel balls. Instead of actually launching the "grenade", the launcher actually functions like a shotgun. When the trigger is pulled, the launcher's spring-loaded hammer strikes a valve at the center of the "grenade" base and allows the canister's stored gas to be released through its cap holes, propelling and spraying out a shower of gel balls towards the target.

Another Chinese company called LDT also introduced a similar "grenade launcher" in the shape of the Milkor MGL, which uses a mainspring-driven revolver-like mechanism that needs to be manually wound before use, and can hold a total of six canisters for repeated discharges.

Legality

First introduced in China as an airsoft substitute (as airsoft has been effectively banned in the Mainland since 2008) and as a better alternative to foam dart guns, gel blasters have become increasingly popular in regions with airsoft-unfriendly laws such as Malaysia,[4][5][6] Vietnam,[7] and particularly Australia, where they quickly gained a massive enthusiast following in states like Queensland and South Australia.[8] As the gel beads (which are commonly sold in gardening and household hardware stores) are not legally regarded as ammunitions, gel blasters are classified as toys by the ACCC ASN/NZ 8124 in Australia and used to be legal for sale, but some toy importers/merchants, such as Brad Towner from Armored Heaven in New South Wales and Peter Clarke from Tactical Edge in Queensland, have been subjected to shipment seizures by the Australian Border Force and prosecuted for "firearm offences"[9][10] but had the lawsuits ruled in their favor.[11] There were also incidents of NSW Police border patrol arresting people who drove interstate to purchase gel blasters from Queensland.[12]

Similarly, DJI's popular remote controlled toy ground drone, the RoboMaster S1, which was introduced into the international market in mid-2019, was almost banned from import into Australia because it had a blaster gun for competitive tag matches, and as of November 2020 is still not available for sale in Victoria and New South Wales in order to "comply with local laws and regulations".[13]

On October 8, 2020, the South Australia Police (SAPOL) announced that gel blasters would be officially declared as a regulated imitation firearm, and subjected to the same sale and possession licensing as paintball markers under the Firearms Act 2015 and Firearms Regulations 2017. People owning gel blasters are required to obtain a Category A firearm licence and registration within a six-month amnesty period (from October 8, 2020 to April 7, 2021), or hand any unauthorised items into a police station or a participating firearms dealer.[14][15] Calls to compensate businesses crippled by the new regulations have been rejected by the State Government.[16] On October 14, SAPOL made the first gel blaster-related arrest of a 26-year-old man.[17] The new regulation has been met with protests from enthusiasts,[18][19][20] but South Australia's paintball community has applauded the crackdown.[21] This crackdown leaves Queensland as the only state in Australia where gel blasters are still treated as legal toy guns,[22] though laws were passed in July 2020 prohibitting public display and mandating club membership and strict storage.[23][24]

In Mainland China, there were moral panics by media similar to those involving airsoft, triggering a joint meeting from the Chinese authority in 2018 to "crackdown and regulate illegal activities/crimes involving guns and explosive items".[25] In September 2020, the Deputy Minister of Public Security, Lin Rui, announced on a video conference of "nationwide special action on crackdown and regulation of online-purchased criminal/illegal imitation guns" (全国打击整治网售仿真枪违法犯罪专项行动) that the Ministry of Public Security, Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs, General Administration of Customs, State Administration for Market Regulation, State Post Bureau and other local authorities will be jointly working to inspect and confiscate any toy guns, gel blasters and other replica/imitation guns that violate the regulation standards, clamping down on the manufacturing, sale and traffacking, and encouraging the public to report in offenders.[26] Although more details are yet to come out, many in China have seen this as the official banning of gel blasters.

See also

References
  1. "Gel Ball Blasters - FAQs". GELTAC Australia.
  2. "Gel Blaster Information, Guides and FAQ". Extac Australia.
  3. "Kublai P1 Glock GBB Gel Blaster". X-Force Tactical.
  4. Larry Ralon (13 January 2020). "Gelsoft fast becoming a hit in Sabah". Daily Express.
  5. Chris Maskilone (12 January 2020). "EXTREME SPORT, GELSOFT STAMPED ITS MARK IN SABAH". Sabah News Today.
  6. "Water Gel Blaster: The Big Bad Blaster War 2017". 24 November 2017.
  7. "RAMBO TEAM, TRAINING FAST AIM, GEL BLASTER VIET NAM". 19 April 2018.
  8. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-28/gel-ball-blaster-guns-skirmish-games-qld. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. Barton, Nicola (2019-03-13). "Toying with firearms laws". Western Weekender.
  10. Clark, Dea (2018-10-28). "Gel ball gamers march on as retailer fights ban on importing toy guns". ABC News.
  11. Barton, Nicola (2020-02-20). "Man at centre of gel gun controversy finally cleared". Western Weekender.
  12. Ugur Nedim (2018-12-27). "Man Prosecuted for Possessing 'Gel Blasters'". Sydney Criminal Lawyers. Archived from the original on 2020-06-21. Retrieved 2019-12-08.
  13. "RoboMaster S1 - DJI Store (AU)". Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  14. "Gel blasters". South Australia Police. 2020-10-08. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  15. "Statement regarding gel blaster regulation". South Australia Police. 2020-10-12. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  16. "SA gel blaster businesses won't be compensated for closure". The Advertiser. 2020-10-09. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  17. Olle, Emily (2020-10-15). "Gel blaster incident in Port Adelaide leads to arrest of 26-year-old man". 7News - SA News. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  18. Polychronis, Gabriel (2020-10-08). "SA gel blaster enthusiasts protest new licensing laws at Police HQ". The Advertiser. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  19. "Gel blaster protesters determined to challenge 'firearm' ruling in South Australia". 9News - National. 2020-10-08. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  20. Nitschke, Stephanie (2020-10-13). "SA gel blaster laws see toys treated as firearms, business owner fears the worst". ABC Riverland. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  21. "Gel blasters: Paintball community says it's about time they were regulated". The Advertiser. 2020-10-14. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  22. Cosenza, Emily (2020-10-09). "Queensland is the only Aussie jurisdiction where gel blasters are legal". The Australian. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  23. "Concerns as toy gun laws pass parliament". 9News - National. 2020-07-16. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  24. Dennien, Matt (2020-07-16). "Queensland government cracks down on gel blasters". Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  25. "公安部等24部门成立打击整治枪支爆炸物品违法犯罪部际联席会议". 公安部网站. 2018-02-09. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
  26. 张子扬 (2020-09-11). "公安部等部门部署开展打击整治网售仿真枪违法犯罪专项行动". 中国新闻网. Retrieved 2020-11-09.
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