This morning a friend alerted me to the fact that coilguns are supposedly legal. I asked him to provide proof and he actually came up with some rather compelling arguments. (In each list I will underline the definitions that could cause a problem.)
A firearm is described as:
a) a gun or other weapon that is capable of propelling anything wholly or partly by means of an explosive; and
b) a blankfire firearm; and
c) an air rifle; and
d) an air pistol; and
e) an imitation firearm, other than a toy; and
f) any other prescribed thing; and
g) any thing that would be a firearm under paragraph a, b, c, or d if it did not have missing from it or a defect or obstruction in it
Any prescribed object is described as:
a) a grenade launcher;
b) a mortar that is capable of being carried manually by a single person.
As mentioned in a previous post, an imitation firearm is described as:
a) is a copy or reproduction of a firearm or has the appearance of a firearm; and
b) could reasonably be mistaken for a firearm;
What concerned us a lot more was the definition of ordnance:
a) a bazooka, rocket launcher or prescribed weapon that, although not a firearm within the meaning of this Act, is designed to be capable of-
i) being carried and used manually
ii) firing a projectile by non-explosive means such as a propellent.
At this point we thought it best to abandon our search, since we'd clearly lost.
Later on, however, I came across this:
noun: propellant; plural noun: propellants
a substance that propels something.
an inert fluid, liquefied under pressure, in which the active contents of an aerosol are dispersed.
"the main uses of CFCs are in aerosols as propellants"
an explosive that fires bullets from a firearm.
"the common gun propellants are either nitrocellulose or a mixture of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine"
a substance used as a reagent in a rocket engine to provide thrust.
"rocket propellants"
And thus hope is restored. An electromagnetic pull is not a propellant per se... Could we get a second opinion though? While we might be able to get a semi-solid defence if we made a coilgun and then it turns out we're wrong, we'd rather avoid that altogether, for obvious reasons.