Gel blaster

Gel ball blasters are often played in CQB-style shooting skirmishes similar to paintball by squads or local clubs of enthusiasts often referred to as "gelballers" or "gelsofters", but follow an airsoft-like honor-based gameplay umpiring system.

This nature of the gel ball 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.

Another feature is the ease of cleaning, since the gel beads are made up of water in over 98% of mass and volume, and will break upon impact and simply dehydrate into tiny slush powder fragments afterwards.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

However, 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"[12][13] but had the lawsuits ruled in their favor.

[14] There were also incidents of NSW Police border patrol ambushing and arresting people who drove interstate to purchase gel ball blasters from Queensland.

[15] 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".

From 3 July 2021, the Western Australian Government banned gel ball blasters citing similarity to real weapons and legitimate safety concerns.

[33] 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 ball blasters and other replica/imitation guns that violate the regulation standards, clamping down on the manufacturing, sale and trafficking, and encouraging the public to report in offenders.