Paintball History Question

[Drunkscriblerian]

Didn’t that wack job Mike from TecPB put them in liquid nitrogen. They froze but all dimpled and wouldn’t shoot straight for nothing. There is probably a YouTube video buried somewhere with him doing this.

I'd actually like to see that, it sounds like my own experience trying to freeze paintballs. Like I said above, they flew really screwy and liked to break in the barrel. And that was after only an hour in a regular freezer.

[William the Third]

Didn’t that wack job Mike from TecPB put them in liquid nitrogen. They froze but all dimpled and wouldn’t shoot straight for nothing. There is probably a YouTube video buried somewhere with him doing this.

It was Defcon who used liquid nitrogen.

[Toestr]

Their liquid nitrogen budget was so high they went out of business.

[PlawB]

To add to some of the history:

After Columbine, a perception went around the country that paintball was training people to shoot other people and was breeding a new generation of school shooters. When I'd talk about paintball at school the perceptions of my peers about me got weird. This coincided with several attempts by several states to either ban paintball, or to put such restrictions on it to destroy the sport. I believe that for a brief period of time, one state in the NE had banned it. New Jersey I think, sometime around 2000. Australia took some onerous actions, like making it illegal to have a paintball gun without a license and you have to be 18+.

So, yes, there was a real threat to the sport.

[uv_halo]

I distinctly remember all of the media responses about that incident (because the media targeted 'goths' etc, and I hapenned to have friends that fit that description). I NEVER heard any assocation of paintball to Columbine (I was active in paintball at the time) or any other mass shootings. I heard plenty of FPS games (Doom and such) used as a scapegoat of sorts.

[M98punk]

Just a Public service announcement… regular paintballs at 295fps or so can break a window… my parents will attest to that and docked my allowance accordingly.

[flyweightnate]

To add to some of the history:

After Columbine, a perception went around the country that paintball was training people to shoot other people and was breeding a new generation of school shooters. When I'd talk about paintball at school the perceptions of my peers about me got weird. This coincided with several attempts by several states to either ban paintball, or to put such restrictions on it to destroy the sport. I believe that for a brief period of time, one state in the NE had banned it. New Jersey I think, sometime around 2000. Australia took some onerous actions, like making it illegal to have a paintball gun without a license and you have to be 18+.

So, yes, there was a real threat to the sport.

People forget columbine. As a kid in the 90s, I remember everything being blamed - FPS video games, music played in reverse, violent movies - except family issues and prescriptions. It's easier to blame something the "grown ups" don't like.

Fortunately, my parents were reasonable. I almost got it good when my brother came into the woods without his mask on while I was target shooting a bouncy target; past that my dad just wanted to be sure we were safe and having fun.

[uv_halo]

The thing that cracks me up about the Media hysteria about paintball is that it followed almost literally on the heels of the whole "D&D causes suicide in children" schtick. I think the media hyped up the problem to make it appear it was more of a concern than it actually was to the average citizen. Similar to how news stations that spread inner city crime news dozens to hundreds of miles away to make everyone feel unsafer, and thus more likely to stay tuned to the news.

Another point in why paintball had issues is that by the time paintball hit the scene, plenty (if not all, due to the low costs of guns, bbs and pump action or Co2 designs) of neighborhoods had problems with kids doing BB gun wars, and everyone can imagine or know first hand, how all that went. And those were all informal, unsanctioned acts, and "now you want even more people (i.e. larger crowds than just the neighborhood kids) shooting things that are bigger than BBs?"

A lot of the community-based resistance to paintball fields wasn't due to paintball specifically. It was often just the opening of a large public (high throughput) business that increased nearby road traffic (esp an issue for areas serviced by dirt roads). Sometimes it stemmed from neighbors who would prefer to walk their dog, or have bonfire parties on that land. Of course, those arguments don't have merit on it's own so, they go after tangential issues like 'increased vandalism', 'increased noise' (from all those super loud paintball guns), passing ordnances to prohibit the activity (harder to do), or even environmental issues. In Northern Virginia, Pev's was successfully sued as being 'detrimental to the Chesapeake Watershed' because the Potomac river is 14mi away. Nevermind that there's a major town between the field and the river, and there's an international airport even closer to the river. This would've forced Pev's to close but, they were able to source a PEG free ball (they were the first to do so), and that's why you see 'PEG Free' these days in other parts of the world. The whole environmental slant was launched by folks who littered on the premise, held parties on the premise, and tried to run a noise complaint...