Can an Airsoft gun be “modified to shoot live rounds?”

That ranks right up there with printing a gun. A cartridge could be held in alignment in a tube to enable a primer strike. Results would be anyone’s guess.

Wow.

That's even stupider than the ceramic Glock 7 from Die Hard that was made to be undetectable by the metal detectors.

I doubt if the barrel and/or action could handle the pressure of a modern cartridge. 22 rimfire maybe, but I would not want to bet my eyes or hands on it.

Maybe once. You can fire a live cartridge with nothing but a hammer. . . once.

Airsoft guns are not rated to 20,000+ PSI. Immediate catastrophic failure is what I expect would happen.

You can turn almost anything into a gun with a bit of ingenuity, plumbing bits and low expectations.
After all, you can kill someone with a well-thrown rock.
Ingenuity and accuracy are the real weapons.

Absolutely not, at least not without the ship of Theseus/grandfather's ax approach. Airsoft guns are externally similar to the items they mimic, but they are entirely different internally.

This is like saying a bottle of water can be easily modified to be a bottle of wine. Maybe for one dude, but not for anyone in the last ~2000 years.

While we are at it, how about all the BB/Pellet replicas?. Lets make those shoot live ammo!

As an “old” guy I can recall zip guns during the 50s and 60s. The days of DA hair styles, leather motorcycle jackets and pegged Levi jeans, chopped and channeled hot rods and Saturday night hops.
I don’t recall ever actually seeing a zip gun however.

There is some (minimal) parts interchangeability between Airsoft and real guns. For example, I'm a fan of the (long defunct) Stowaway grip for the AR-15. These have been impossible to find for a number of years. I found, at one point, that Numrich still had Airsoft Stowaway grips. These were identical except that they didn't have the hole drilled for the selector detent spring. (I think I may have snapped up their remaining supply.)

Other than flukes like that, it would be practically impossible to turn an Airsoft into a real gun. Perhaps cosmetically, but not functionally.

I've seen a 22lr single shot made out of a hand tool held deep drill bushing/guide. Spring loaded bolt release.

There are pistols built on air soft frames... I’ve seen a couple of glocks... but it is only the grip frame that is used and the slide , barrel, and trigger have to be sourced from a donor Glock or aftermarket. There was one brand of air soft years back that reportedly had grip frames supplied by the same manufacturer that moulded them for Glock on contract so they were to spec other than inletting for the slide rails.
This used to be a thing before p80 glocks.
Most other airsift pistols have magwells purposefully built to custom dimensions to prevent insertion of the original factory mags... I’ve tried quite a few with this in mind

Rule3 said:

While we are at it, how about all the BB/Pellet replicas?. Lets make those shoot live ammo!

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I recall years back that there were Makarov pistols converted to c02 air pistols imported and sold here as such.

MOST airsoft guns are not even slightly operating like real guns. They are RC cars, shaped like guns. Literally, RC car motors drive gears to push a piston of air to make the pellets go poof out the barrel. Batteries to drive them. Nothing remotely gun like. You couldn't get a cartridge in there much less ignite it.

A decent number work more like a real gun, in that the bolt/carrier or slide reciprocates. These still are miles from a real gun in operation. The hammer strikes the back of the magazine to release a puff of pressurized gas, etc. etc. Again, no place for a cartridge to go (a straight 6.000 mm tube, no chamber), no way to ignite it, and even on the increasing number of mostly/all metal guns, it's not good metal, they would explode on the very first shot.

A very, very small number 30 years ago (relative to the mass of them out now now) fired cartridges, either plastic pellet holders, or a tiny number actual primer-activated things. Even those were ATF inspected, approved, Not A Gun, not easily converted to a gun.

By the time you get it converted, you'd be better off making something from scratch you did so much work.


The closest that ever happened was BB guns and aside from general gunfear that airsoft look like guns, MAYBE this is where it comes from? A few east block BB guns were/are built off real gun frames/receivers, made in the actual gun factories. Two I know of are the Baikal mp-654k (Makarov) and the Junkers AKM, made in the Kalishnakov factory. I have seen a couple reliable sources that these have most of the parts, good metallurgy, etc. so can be converted to real guns but it is still a lot of work. Pretty easy for an AK maker in the US to do, but in a no-guns country, you are already not going to have those parts/skill. Or... you could make your own guns pretty easily. You are not far from laser cutting a receiver flat and proceeding from there at this point.

Well, I'm probably gonna step on a landmine here, but maybe you could at one point.

In 2010 the ATF caught a lot of flak for intercepting a small shipment of airsoft M4 rifles. Here is one of many stories about that:

https://www.everydaynodaysoff.com/2010/02/28/airsoft-gun-seizure-apparently-toys-can-be-real-guns/

So a lot of folks automatically laughed at the idea, but either way some of the folks who already had the airsoft gave it a try...and I can't see any of those results on the Internet anymore. Basically, it WAS just an airsoft, but it was an Airsoft that had at it's core a closer-than-80% lower according to some people at the time. Here is a link to the "new" lower:
https://www.evike.com/products/47163/

Yes, the lower would mate with an upper. One 'smith at the time said it was 10 minutes with a Dremel and 1 new hole drilled to make it into a usable AR lower. Others said it would be just as easy to make a lower from a block of aluminum. I don't know for sure, but it was an interesting story at the time. Either way, it was no more a "machine gun" than any other AR lower (well, except that it could fire Airsoft BBs full auto.)

Attempting to do so would likely result in creating a functional hand grenade rather than a functional centerfire gun. Depending n the cartridge involved that is.

Thunderchicken said:

I’m reading a mystery set in England and the author matter-of-factly makes this claim. I know that every author gets one impossible plot point and maybe this is his, but it made me curious. I know nothing about replica guns but I know a little about the real thing and the idea seems ridiculous. Can some of the assembled gun wisdom comment on this?

I assume by “modified” he doesn’t mean some ship of Theseus thing where all parts are replaced with ones from a real firearm. Not sure this belongs in “general” but I’m sure someone will move it if not. Thanks.

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Do better at a plumbing supply store. Take a look sometimes at images, especially in Brazil but I have seen one from Australia, of the different homemade firearms including primitive bolt actions, zip guns, shotguns, and all sorts in between. Most of them seem to have the potential to kill and maim at both ends--just not predictably.

-Depends on what you mean by "modified".
I've known guys that could use the carcasses of Airsoft, Nerf, or almost any toy as the container and matrix for an operable firearm.
I had a neighbor (former CIA) who collected Filipino brake shop guns.
They ranged from almost perfect LOOKING clones of commercially-produced firearms to operating firearms that could be confused with squirt guns or other children's toys... .

whughett said:

As an “old” guy I can recall zip guns during the 50s and 60s. The days of DA hair styles, leather motorcycle jackets and pegged Levi jeans, chopped and channeled hot rods and Saturday night hops.
I don’t recall ever actually seeing a zip gun however.

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I've heard of zip guns as well. The only one I ever saw was in one of the Death Wish movies

A guy on Weapons Guild claims to have modified an Airsoft Glock to function with a Glock 22 slide. It’s an old thread so the pix have probably been Photobucketed.

http://www.weaponsguild.com/forum/index.php?topic=17714.0

Of course they can. It was in a book, wasn't it?

Just realized that I never actually tried! I have a variety of airsoft trainers, and of live ARs in various calibers.

At least those I have, trying the airsoft lower on real upper: No.

• Receiver is a bit too short. Pins don't line up.
• Receiver extension stuff is just wrong, but maybe you could make do if you stuck a real spring and buffer in there, maybe.
• Inlet for rear takedown pin boss is too narrow. The upper won't fit down into it. Would be non-trivial machining to make sure it all lines up when you finish.
• Fire control is not actually fire control. The hammer doesn't fly forward at all, but just rotates like 20°, just enough to drive a different pin below the bolt stop parts, that smacks the back of the magazine (where the gas valve is).
• And probably more that I forgot or didn't notice.

I didn't try trading out fire control bits, mostly for legal reasons. As long as we don't break it, if anyone nearby enough to me has the proper licenses and wants to try it, we can attempt to stuff M16 fire control into one of my airsoft AR lowers and see what doesn't match so we know.

Usually what they will modify in England are blank-firing replica guns. Not airsoft guns.

But it looks like a real gun so all you must have to is change a few parts.
The only thing antis know is they don't like guns, they don't anything about guns, think they know everything but all they want is to ban them.