INNOCENT children’s toys, harmless collectables for enthusiasts or illegal replica firearms that can be used to commit serious indictable armed robberies?

That is the question being thrashed out in Wyong Local Court where police have lodged an application to destroy more than 120 alleged imitation firearms seized from a gift shop at Tuggerah.

Police allege the items which include replica Smith & Wesson, Walther and Beretta pistols and AK47 and other select-fire rifles, constitute prohibited imitation firearms under the Firearms Act 1996.

media_camera Real or fake? Police say these are prohibited replica guns but the distributor says they’re just children’s toy cap guns.

However the importer who distributes the replica guns in Australia is fighting to get them back arguing they are legal “toys” under the same legislation.

The case could set a legal precedent with far-reaching implications for hundreds of gift shops and tobacconists across NSW which sell the lookalikes.

Undercover police attended Modcons Gifts & Accessories at Westfield Tuggerah in November where a staff member told them “you have to be 18 to purchase the firearms and produce ID”, police claim in the application tendered to court.

media_camera A replica AK47 was among items seized and sent to police ballistics for examination.

The guns were housed behind a locked glass cabinet where a sign advised customers: “the removal of the red plug in the barrel to make it look like a real firearms is illegal and will make you liable for prosecution”.

The covert officers took photographs which they sent to the NSW Police Force’s Forensic Ballistics Investigation section.

About two weeks later police got a warrant and searched the shop on December 8 seizing 41 replica guns and a further 86 from a storage cupboard near Coles.

media_camera Dozens of items were seized.

media_camera Mostly pistols were confiscated from the Central Coast store.

Seventeen of the replica guns, representing each model on sale, were sent to ballistics for examination with all but two flintlock rifles deemed prohibited imitations­.

The flintlock rifles were found to be imitations of antique firearms and not prohibited. The police application revealed 69 replica firearms were seized in a raid on the same shop in 2013 but these were later returned because they were engraved with the letters “CE”.

“It was believed at the time that this classification was used to make items toys in European standards,” the police application read.

media_camera The glass cabinets at Tuggerah’s Modcons Gifts & Accessories where knives have replaced ‘toy’ guns seized by police. The shop no longer sells the replica firearms.

Police allege these new replica guns were being used in armed robberies on the Coast by criminals who simply removed the red plug in the barrel to make it look real.

The distributor Howard Silvers & Sons has applied for the return of the stock arguing there was an exemption in section 4 of the Act, which states “an imitation firearm does not include any such object that is produced and identified as a children’s toy”.

Company managing director Michael Silvers said “over the years we’ve had a number of stores that have had their children’s toys taken but returned because of that exemption”.

“A children’s toy is a children’s toy and they’re manufactured as children’s toys,” he said. The matter has been adjourned to August 18.