This is getting silly. There have been enough arbitrary restrictions already. Chops is the only one who uses airguns in our group and he's staying home, so this should be a complete non-issue. We're going to drive 800 miles with four people in a tiny car, and we're going to use the springer primaries and barrels we bring with us. Any springer based on a standard design firing #6 slugs out of a hopper should be fine.
This is the least arbitrary restriction on nerf guns to be allowed at a war, ever. That is not hyperbole. Literally every weapon restriction ever created for a nerf war, in all the history of nerf wars, is more arbitrary than measuring muzzle velocity with uniform dart weight. Furthermore, it REPLACES the arbitrary restrictions on blaster power that we would have needed without this rule.
Admittedly, one could argue that the choice of 200fps is arbitrary, and you would be correct. There's no magic muzzle energy under which all safety concerns disappear, and our hobby becomes accessible to all people. 200 fps is just a nice round number that's slightly under the power of the average +bow, which I have always believed to be slightly too powerful.
PS: There are going to be people at the war other than the LGLF, so Chops not coming with his airguns isn't particularly relevant.
(My secret agenda is to let Kane find out on his own that testing everyone's blasters is an unworkable strategy for rule enforcement)
I'm aware that it's not practical to test every single blaster before the war, but that's not really necessary. Just making it available will allow those with high powered blasters to check, and many others will be fine observing that a blaster with greater range than theirs passes the test.
This of course leaves open the possibility of deliberate neglect, so I was planning to establish a procedure by which a nerfer could challenge anothers blaster after seeing it perform at the war. Blasters slightly above the threshhold will be banned thereafter, and blasters "significantly" above the threshhold will be run over with Ryan's car, unless a heavier vehicle is available.
My original plan was to define "significantly" above the threshhold as 250 fps, but after seeing the hostility towards having an empirical method for blaster bans, I'm thinking something more like 225 fps would be wise. All of these numbers are subject to change for the few days as we do more thorough testing.