Thing is, only certain places take it upon themselves to hard-disable the airsoft - whether by glueing the hatch, glueing the switch or cutting wires inside (eeek), seems to be little retail hobby shops probably scared of a lawsuits etc.

None that I have bought from ebay have been disabled in any way. Disabling airsoft guns in tanks is just following the law to the letter, but when you look up airsoft restrictions etc they basically talk about 2 things: handguns and rifles. Tanks are sort of a grey area when it comes to how Police/customs etc handle them. I don't miss guns, and I don't miss the gun crime that went with them...

All this because a guy went on a killing spree 11 years ago, 200kms from where I live - a guy that I have been in the same room as multiple times. He shot 37 people (killing 35)... including some little kids ( [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Bryant]The Man[/link] | [link=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Arthur_massacre_%28Australia%29]The Murders[/link])