Italy
In Italy, any mechanism that produces a muzzle energy higher than 1 joule (0.74 ft·lbf) and lower than 7.5 joules (5.53 ft·lbf) is considered a "low-power air gun"; the sale of such instruments is open to anyone over 18 years of age without license or registration, but it can take place only in authorized gun shops where the owner must require the purchaser to provide his ID Card as a proof of age.
Any device developing a muzzle energy equal to, or higher than, 7.5 joules is considered a "high-power air gun", requiring Police licensing and registration for purchase and detention just like any firearm. Bows, crossbows and similar are exempt from this rule. The muzzle energy of such devices is certified by a governance office called "Banco di Prova". Air guns developing less than 1 joule of muzzle energy are categorized as airsoft, which are considered by law as toys, with no restriction whatsoever to their trade, except that they can never be modified to achieve a higher muzzle energy and must be only able to shoot 6 mm plastic pellets.
Read more about this topic: Air Gun Laws
Famous quotes containing the word italy:
“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed—they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”
—Orson Welles (1915–84)
“Uncle Matthew’s four years in France and Italy between 1914 and 1918 had given him no great opinion of foreigners. “Frogs,” he would say, “are slightly better than Huns or Wops, but abroad is unutterably bloody and foreigners are fiends.””
—Nancy Mitford (1904–1973)
“For us to go to Italy and to penetrate into Italy is like a most fascinating act of self-discovery—back, back down the old ways of time. Strange and wonderful chords awake in us, and vibrate again after many hundreds of years of complete forgetfulness.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)