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Felons, illegal immigrants and all others banned from buying a gun in the United States take a new alternative if they're looking to get their hands on a firearm: But purchase a toy.

A FoxNews.com investigation reveals that a popular recreational pellet gun can be converted easily to a real semi-automatic weapon. And while the federal Bureau of Booze Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is already enlightened of the event, these "toys" -- new, summit-of-the-line airsoft rifles -- continue to be sold throughout the country.

Like paintball without the paint, the propane-powered airsoft guns are designed to shoot quarter-inch plastic pellets and are generally used for recreation or in armed services and constabulary enforcement training.

When the ATF seized a shipment of 30 of these guns in October from a port in Tacoma, Wash., it said they could be "readily convertible" to machine guns. But gun experts chosen that claim absurd and said the ATF was overstepping its premises.

Now one of those critics is reversing his position, saying at least one airsoft manufacturer has taken the quest to be authentic a little too far.

"The airsoft can exist converted to an AR-15," firearms manufacturer Leo Gonnuscio told FoxNews.com after testing the brand and model of airsoft guns seized by the ATF.

Having concluded that several other airsoft guns could not be converted to fire real ammunition, Gonnuscio said he was surprised to discover that he was able to to transform this detail gun to the real thing  -- and with "minimal work," because its bottom half, or "receiver," is then similar to an AR-xv'south.

To make the airsoft receiver part just like an AR-xv's, Gonnuscio said, "All y'all have to practice is drill 1 pigsty."

And in one case that's out of the way, the rest is even easier. The AR-xv receiver is the only part of the semi-automatic rifle that is given a series number, and is the only role that is regulated. All the remaining parts of the real thing can be purchased by anyone – whatever kid, criminal or terrorist.

The cost of buying the Taiwan-made airsoft gun and all the parts needed to convert it to an AR-15 comes to roughly $1,100 -- more than the toll of some existent AR-15s. Only someone who can't clear a groundwork check or has been refused a gun for whatever other reason could use this method to make his own lethal weapon, Gonnuscio said.

Making information technology into a machine gun, he said, would require nevertheless another conversion, and the makeshift gun would likely exist able to fire only 15-xx rounds earlier it stopped working due to the pressure it would have to withstand while firing in an automatic fashion.

But every bit semi-automatic weapon, Gonnuscio said, "It may non terminal forever, but they've got a gun to go the chore done that they were assigned to do, and nobody knows the wiser."

The ATF has made no reported moves to regulate or seize whatever more of the airsoft guns, which go on to exist sold in stores around the state, and it appears to be bowing to critics and reconsidering its stance on the guns' convertibility.

"We're having to have a serious await at this, so it'southward merely something that we're reviewing, and I'm hoping we'll have some information that we can make available to the public certainly very soon," ATF spokesman Drew Wade told FoxNews.com.

But firearms expert Len Savage said the ATF is taking a "serious await" at the wrong result -- or, more than specifically, the wrong part of the gun.

The reason it'southward possible to make these airsoft receivers function every bit existent receivers is that all an AR-xv receiver does is hold the gun together, Savage said. So with plenty gun knowledge, almost annihilation can be fabricated into a receiver.

"There'southward a line of AR-15 firearms out there where the lower (the receiver) is made entirely of injection molded plastic … It could be made of paper-thin and scotch tape," he said.

The nigh important part of an AR-fifteen, and the well-nigh difficult part to replicate, he said, is the upper half of the gun -- which is unmarked, unregulated and readily available for purchase.

"The ATF is regulating the wrong part equally a firearm receiver, non the part that goes bang," Savage said.

"The upper is what contains the barrel, the breech or bolt, that's what contains all the force per unit area," he added.

The reason the lower half of the AR-15 is the part with the serial number, and thus classified as the receiver, is that when the gun was created information technology was upwardly to the manufacturer to choose the location of the gun's serial number, he said. Because the lesser of the gun has a flat surface, it was the easiest to mark.

And though federal police has since divers a gun's receiver as the part "which provides housing for the hammer, bolt, breechblock and firing machinery," Cruel says the agency has connected to mark and regulate the lower office of the AR-15 to avoid confusion.

"In the stream of commerce, you lot'd have uppers that were marked and regulated and so lowers that were marked and regulated, y'all could run into the confusion on a dealer ground" in determining which parts require licensing and which don't, Savage said.

Just even though the upper half of the gun can be bought by anyone, Gonnuscio yet says that banning the airsoft receivers and implementing a few new rules for airsoft manufacturers could be a expert start to keeping unregulated AR-15s off the street.

"I would promise that the ATF applies pressure to the manufacturers of these airsoft guns to redesign them then they cannot exist converted," he said. "Brand them move the pin holes ... so that an upper can't exist attached to it without major machining.

"Fill in some of that gap and then that they would literally have to chuck this matter upwardly in a mill and totally reconfigure information technology to work. Tighten upwardly the magazine well and then a regular mag won't fit in it."

And because the U.Southward. is such a large market for these airsoft guns, Gonnuscio said, a foreign industry would change the product if its electric current design were banned here.

"In that location are tons of proficient uses for these guns: Nosotros utilise them for preparation, kids do reenacting with them, kids get out there and play just similar the old days. We played BB gun wars when we were kids and we survived. These are trivial plastic balls that are shot by electricity or propane.

"And then permit them have their toys. Simply make certain they're still toys."