The fluorescent orange tip on the barrel is the only thing that blows its cover and identifies it as a toy.
The other two gel blasters he shows me have no telling signs that they too are harmless replicas.
One looks like a compact machine gun I’ve seen in action movies; the other, a handgun.
As harmless as these ‘toys’ are, they are classified as prohibited weapons and carry hefty penalties for people possessing them.
Mr Threlfall only has them in store because a day earlier, someone had surrendered them to his dealership.
Gel blasters are legal in Victoria, so long as they don’t look like real weapons.
“If people find themselves in a position where they’ve got one, it’s probably easier to hand it in than to have all the hassles of a fine and losing your other firearms — because that will happen,” Mr Threlfall said.
Divisional Firearms Officer Leading Senior Constable Chris Cummins said there were a lot of gel blasters that looked like real weapons in the area.
“A lot of them have come from interstate. You can legally buy them in Queensland, but you can’t have them in Victoria,” Leading Snr Constable Cummins said.
While sellers in the Sunshine State are legally required to display signage advising buyers to ‘check your state regulations’, such warnings could be easily missed, and customers might mistakenly believe that if something is allowed to be sold in Australia, it’s allowed to be possessed nationwide.
People also buy them online and have them shipped to Victoria.
However, they attract even higher fines than firearms because they are prohibited goods.
Senior Sergeant Heidi Twining from the Eastern Division 3 proactive police unit said the owners did the right thing by surrendering the items.
“That’s what we’d encourage people to do if they’ve made that honest mistake,” she said.
Leading Snr Constable Cummins said because the amnesty was anonymous, there was no risk of prosecution.
“No questions asked. The items are taken, destroyed, done. It’s all part of the amnesty,“ he said.
While you can take them to police stations, police ask that you first either call from your car or come in to alert officers you have weapons to surrender rather than just walking into the foyer unannounced and armed.
“If they do come to the station, we like them to pull up out the front and let us know, and if they’re not in bags, they’re wrapped up in blankets or something before coming in,” Leading Snr Constable Cummins said.
“Nine times out of 10, a police officer will come out to the boot of your car and take them for you anyway.”
Police encourage people to surrender the items to a licensed firearms dealer in the first instance.
“Bring them in and we can take them under the amnesty, no names recorded, and then you’re in a situation where your mind is at ease and you’re not going to be questioned,” Mr Threlfall said.
“We report to the police licensing division what we buy, what we sell, what we take in, every week, which means that these guns won’t end up in the wrong hands.”
Without the amnesty, people might be tempted to dispose of the weapons unsafely, such as dumping them where they might fall into the wrong hands or destroying them themselves.
“We prefer people to do the right thing,” Snr Sgt Twining said.
Mr Threlfall says our culture has brought a fear of guns upon ourselves.
“If you look at America, the only shootings are in public places where guns are banned,” he said.
He said there were a lot of different ways to look at it, but questioned where people stopped and started being responsible for their own actions.
Of course, the same steak knife you innocently eat your dinner with could become a weapon rather than an ordinary utensil in the wrong hands.
The culture surrounding guns that Mr Threlfall grew up with is still firmly instilled in him and his staff at Trelly’s Outdoor. They don’t flinch when they see someone approach them with a gun under their arm, but Mr Threlfall understands why others might be unsettled and suggests anyone bringing weapons in for surrender wraps them to avoid public alarm.
“Unless you’re parked close-by here and you’re walking into the shop, it would be a bit unusual to see a gun in the streets today,” he said.
“But you know, we used to put them on our pushbikes and go to school and go to clay target shooting and it was not a problem.”
He said media and societal aspects had given gun owners a bit of a dirty name, but emphasised that owning a firearm did not make someone a bad person.
