I recently came back from Japan and as expected, their gun culture is a quite different.
For context, Japan’s gun laws are stricter than ours, with most sporting shooters or hunters only owning shotguns.
However, airsoft and model making are massive hobbies in Japan, to the point where the mechanical replicas and airsoft guns are visually indistinguishable from the real firearms. I got the chance to shoot a few airsoft guns, and most of them had the right weight and tactile feel till you pulled the trigger.
What was really funny though was the attachments and mods available. There were people putting genuine Magpul and Daniel Defense equipment on their airsoft M4s. You could also buy joke oil filters to attach as a suppressor to the end as a visual mod.
I was astounded by what was available as airsoft guns in Japan - the quality was amazing.
The stupid thing is there’d probably be fewer actual guns in Australia if people were allowed airsoft guns - there’s heaps of people out there who were all “Well if I need a licence for an air gun, I might as well get that licence then buy a .22 and now I want a shotgun for busting clays, and the guys at work invited me to come hunting with them so now I need a .243…”
Oh yeah, there was an M4 that I shot that had a proper fire selector, and a bolt system that fully recoiled when you fired. Combined with the fact it was all metal, if I couldn’t hear or smell, you would have me convinced.
Also how accessible it was, one of the best airsoft places I went to was in the heart of Shinjuku, in Kabukicho. It would be like if you do the same on Chapel St next to a nightclub. You also sometimes saw people on the train with gun cases, so it’s very normalised there.
Seeing them for sale in Don Quijote was cool too - only in Japan can you have a shop that sells Kit-Kat chocolate bars, Hello Kitty merch, portable hard drives, sex toys, makeup, clothing, alcohol, legit Gucci bags, and guns in the same place.
