nowadays there isnt much division between low power pistols and real guns, depends how much ya wanna spend and what ammo ya use, if your rich enough you could get a air pistol with same power as a real pistol, and if you use steel ammo (illegal apparently here) it could easly rip through what a real pistol could.
when you come to air rifles vs real rifles the division becomes much bigger, as ya can spend a few grand on the muts nuts air rifle, but they are designed to fire lead pelets, if you use even a equivilant weight steel pelet the tragectory changes hugely!
and obviously most rifles will be in a different league all together!
closest thing i can think of thats still legal is a hunting rifle.. think ya gotta have a licence...and untill i was told about em a few months ago id never heard of em....
blodey nanny state
i did once make me own air rifle....easly more powerfull than any pistol(depending on ammo) and possibly some rifles....How? a piece of 22mm copper pipe (1 meter) a quater turn ball valve and modded lever, and a 28mm reserver for the air, all soldered and brazed(in places)
with a few compressions, the air reserver had a pressure guage (from a fire extinguisher) and it fired Tap parts, the best being the brass peglar, dunno what its called, but is very long and about 1cm thick, simply removed everything from it leaving me with a brass bar, and the round disk that holds the washer.
it was connected to a bottle of CO2 (used for mig weilding)
using an old blowtorch head (modified) which was connected to a orange high pressure tube, connected in turn to a stopcock, from here it was to a braded tube...
.....
....
my god....
my best was when i fired through 15mm steel...like it was butter...but couldent do it again as the 'ammo' broke lol....that was charged to 4 bars, i could go to 60 if i wanted, but i think gun would have gone bang...
so ya see it, with a few other things aswell(im not gunna say so that any young readers cant make it!!)
i managed to make a ill fitting tap part fire through steel....
almost unbelevable... can you imagine if the ammo fitted better...and the gun fired at 60 bars?...
it had to be done manualy and reloaded manuly, about 30 seconds to reload,....prehaps it should be in the catogry of cannon rather than gun?
either way i will try and dig it out and re make it better and have another go... ive been saying that for years!
still, the good times
ss