➡ New York lawmakers are proposing bills to regulate air rifles, pellet guns, and BB guns, treating them like imitation weapons. This means these guns would need to meet visual safety standards like being brightly colored or transparent. The bills also aim to raise the minimum age for purchasing these guns from 16 to 18 and increase penalties for violations. The proposed changes are seen as an attempt to control the gun culture by targeting the entry point for many into firearms ownership.
➡ New York is introducing stricter rules for selling and owning air guns, treating them like imitation weapons with toy gun appearance rules and increased age restrictions. This is part of a broader gun control effort, which some argue is not about public safety but about reducing the market for these products. Critics warn that this could lead to further restrictions on other types of guns. It’s important for people, especially in New York, to be aware of these changes and voice their opinions through the legislative process.

I’m gonna apologize first off. Pollen is real today here in East Tennessee. How do the anti-American communist gun controllers now hope to dismantle the gun culture? By stopping it before it ever starts and banning something just about every single gun owner either had growing up or had experience with and have used at some point. BB guns, air rifles, and pellet guns. Of course, the leaders. of assassinations and murders in the world. We have to ban those. Jared here, and this one is another example of exactly how gun control never stays in the lane that they promise it will.

Because now we’re looking, of course, at New York where lawmakers are pushing bills that will target air rifles, pellet guns, and BB guns by trying to fold them into the state’s imitation weapons laws. That’s right. We’re going after toys and training tools for kids. And if you’ve ever heard that and thought, you know, wait a minute. Are they really trying to treat functional air guns like actual toy guns? Or are they gonna try to treat them like real weapons? Well, the answer is yes. That is exactly what these bills are set up to do.

And I’ll start this out by saying while not many people are out using them in self-defense scenarios, they are armed and they are protected by the Second Amendment. We’re going to talk about Senate Bill S9215 and Assembly Bill A10701 in New York. The bills say they relate to certain types of imitation guns, including air rifles, pellet guns, and BB guns. The Senate version was introduced February 17th of 26th and it was referred to the Senate Codes Committee where it is at the moment. And the Assembly version was introduced March 20th, and that is right now being considered by the Assembly Consumer Affairs and Protection Committee, whatever they want to call it out there.

So today I want to talk to you about this and tell you walk through what the bill does and why it matters far beyond just air gun owners, and why this is yet another reminder that anti-gun politicians will not stop at firearms. They will never stop. They just keep chipping away and chipping away. They want to regulate the culture, the training pipeline, youth entry points, recreation, collecting, and anything else remotely adjacent to the exercise of arms. And that’s the real story here because a lot of Americans hear air gun and think they’re backyard plinking pest control target practice maybe think about training a new shooter before they move up to rim fire or center fire guns and and that’s what a lot of normal people think.

But gun control politicians look at anything that resembles the shape, function, or culture of shooting and ask one question. How can we control it? How can we ban it? How can we cancel it? And New York’s answer appears to be this bill right here. But before we discuss this bad news, let’s talk about something pretty cool. Here’s an awesome chance for you, my subscriber, to win something amazing. I partnered again with veteran-owned smallbusinessfanadm.com to bring you an awesome opportunity to win this twin-turbo 6-liter W12 Bentley Continental GT. This one was made famous by Tyler Hoover of Hoobies Garage.

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So click the link, utilize the QR code, or go to fanadm.com slash gadgets, grab some limited edition channel merch or digital download, and get your automatic entry and a chance to win this amazing Bentley Continental GT. The last day to enter is tomorrow, April 15th, 2026 at 11.59 Pacific Time. Thank you for the support and good luck to you. Now let’s start with the text of this bill. The bill amends New York’s general business law. In its current framework, New York already regulates imitation weapons. The state’s existing definition says, an imitation weapon means a device that substantially duplicates or can reasonably be perceived to be an actual firearm, air rifle, pellet gun, or BB gun, unless it meets certain visual requirements like being brightly colored, or made of transparent or translucent materials, and having a closed barrel for at least half an inch.

In other words, a toy, an existing law that’s aimed at fake guns and look-alikes. Now what S9215 does is change that definition so that an imitation weapon now explicitly includes an air rifle, pellet gun, or a BB gun itself. That is the key move. Not something that merely resembles one, but the air rifle, the pellet gun, or the BB gun gets pulled directly into the imitation weapon definition now. The Senate bill, the text on the Senate bill shows that change plainly and the uploaded bill text says the same thing. And that matters because once something gets dropped into New York’s imitation weapon category, it’s no longer being treated like a normal functioning device in the stream of commerce.

It gets forced into a visual compliance box designed for fake toys and fake, you know, and guns, and that are toys, toy guns. And the sponsor memo on this doesn’t hide that at all. It says that the bill makes clear that air rifles, pellet guns, and BB guns must be brightly colored and meet the same visual safety standards that already apply to imitation guns. And those standards are not minor. Under New York’s existing law, that means that air rifles, BB guns, and pellet guns must be either predominantly bright colors like white, bright red, bright orange, bright yellow, like neon green, bright blue, bright pink, or bright purple, or be made entirely of transparent or translucent materials.

It also must have a barrel closed for at least one half inch from the forend unless it is a water gun. Now stop right there. How many real functional air pellet or BB guns do you know that are designed to comply with a legal regime meant for brightly colored toys or transparent imitation firearms? And that’s the point. So even though the bill may not be using the phrase total ban in giant letters, this looks a whole lot like one of those legislative tricks that anti-gun states love to use. They don’t always say we’re banning this one outright.

Instead, they redefine the item. Then they impose impossible conditions. Then they say, well, if manufacturers won’t comply, that’s not our fault. But that’s the mechanism and that’s the result here. It’s the same thing. It’s the same political game we see over and over again with firearms, magazines, accessories, ammunition, carrying rights, and now apparently air guns. Because there’s so many violent crimes with them. They build a legal standard that the targeted product category cannot realistically meet and then they pretend they merely regulated it. That’s what people need to understand. This is not just some niche air gun issue for a tiny corner of hobbyists.

Air guns have long been part of the broader American shooting culture. For many people, they’re the first safe and affordable step into marksmanship. They’re used for skill building, backyard practice where lawful, small game or pest control in some contexts, youth introduction under supervision, and low cost repetition of the fundamentals that translate into firearm competence later on. So when the state goes after air guns, it’s not just going after an object. It’s going after the on-ramp to firearms and ownership. And anti-gun politicians know exactly what they’re doing when they attack the on-ramp. Now there is another piece of this bill that people need to pay attention to as well.

Section two raises the age for purchasing a paint pellet gun or another type of air gun from 16 to 18. The senate sponsor memo says exactly that and the bill text itself states that no person, firm, or corporation shall sell or offer to sell a paint pellet gun or other types of air guns to anyone under 18. It also increases the civil penalty for violations from not more than $500 to not more than $1,000 for each violation. So this is not just about cosmetic redesigns, it’s also expanding age restrictions and increasing penalties.

And then it goes even further. The bill amends New York’s public nuisance style gun law so that gun industry members would include entities engaged in the sale, manufacture, distribution, importing, or marketing not only of firearms, ammunition, magazines, and firearms accessories, but now also imitation weapons. The upload of bill text and the senate bill page both show that expansion. And why does that matter? Because once imitation weapons get folded into that framework, businesses dealing in those products can be swept into the same New York liability structure that already applies to firearm related commerce.

The bill says gun industry members who manufacture market import or offer for wholesale or retail sale any qualified product or imitation weapon in New York must establish and use reasonable controls and procedures, whatever that means, to prevent those items from being possessed, used, marketed, or sold unlawfully in New York. It also says no gun industry member shall knowingly or recklessly create, maintain, or contribute to a condition in New York that endangers public safety through the sale, manufacturing, importing, or marketing of a qualified product or imitation weapon. Yeah, you figure out how to operate in that web and wonder why businesses are just dropping out of this game altogether, which is the intention.

So now imagine you are a seller or distributor or a manufacturer. You’re no longer simply selling air guns. You’re now potentially operating inside a hostile legal framework that treats those products as imitation weapons and imposes toy gun style appearance rules. It heightens age restrictions and plugs the entire thing into New York’s broader gun control industry control apparatus. Again, that’s how these anti-gun states work. They pile classification changes on top of age restrictions, on top of civil penalties, on top of liability exposure, on top of vague compliance obligations, and then they just stand back and let the pressure kill the market.

That’s what it’s supposed to do. That is why this deserves attention from every Second Amendment supporter, even if you personally do not own an air rifle. If you’re one of those people typing, I never use one, so it doesn’t bother me, you’re part of the problem, man, because the principle is bigger than the product. If the state can take a class of lawful, functioning air powered guns and try to shove them into a legal category meant for fake guns that I mean, what won’t they do to try to relabel or ban next? And let’s talk honest about this narrative they’ll use.

They’ll say this is about public safety. They’ll say this is about reducing confusion. They’ll say law enforcement needs visual clarity. They’ll say kids could be endangered. They’ll say the public could mistake one thing for another. How about just being a good parent? I mean, is that difficult nowadays? Let’s teach your kids. Don’t play with guns. Don’t go pointing them at people. In fact, the Senate sponsor memo here on this bill says that the purpose is to reduce confusion between imitation weapons and real firearms, to strengthen age restrictions on air guns, and to make businesses involved in imitation weapons follow the basic safety standards similar to those in the firearms industry.

So when the solution to confusion is to force actual air guns into the same external design, the regime they made for fake guns, the state’s no longer just solving confusion. It’s actually creating more. It’s redefining reality to regulate a lawful product category out of ordinary commerce. And that’s why so many people look at bills like this and say, you know, this is not moderation. This is prohibition by bureaucracy, which is exactly what it is. Guys, I can’t tell you how bad this bill is. But the Second Amendment is not just about one specific hardware category frozen in place.

It protects a pre-existing right tied to keeping and bearing arms. The culture of arms, the training in arms, the familiarity with arms, the safe use of arms, the transmission of that knowledge from one person, one generation to the next. All of that lives downstream from whether a free people are treated like citizens or subjects. And anti-gun governments do not want a confident, self-reliant armed culture because then we the people would be able to keep the power that those politicians so desperately desire. I hope you guys understand exactly what’s going on. But on top of that, don’t forget time is running out to enter to win this twin turbo 12 cylinder Bentley Continental GT and support the channel by grabbing some some cool merch items.

Head over to fan of them dot com slash gadgets or use my QR code here floating above one of my shoulders and enter by 11 59 p.m. Pacific tomorrow, April 15, 2026 and good luck. Now, as of today, these bills are active. They’re still in committee and you guys and gals in New York can kill them if you get on your elected creatures. Again, this is all going to come down to we the people and whether we get active and take control of the system designed to give us and maintain the control or you know just keep giving power to those who desire it.

If you live in New York, it’s time to pay attention to these bills. Read them for yourself and make your voice heard through the legislative process. I appreciate y’all seriously from what we’re watching across the country. Don’t make the mistake of just thinking this is just New York being New York. This is how they spread these things. It’ll start in New York and it’ll move to California and Massachusetts and Connecticut and Illinois. Before you know it, it’s coming to a state where you live. I appreciate y’all. Be safe, stay vigilant, carry a gun, keep you, your friends, your family, your community safe.

If you love the Second Amendment, I ask you to please consider subscribing to Guns and Gadgets and sharing the information that we provide here. Until we see each other again, stay safe, stay armed, and stay free. Take care. you
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