Version two...

Friday, December 02, 2005


There is a word being whispered in the quiet corners of paintball's corporate world, behind closed, guarded doors, by small groups of fretful executives.

The word is, recession!

Corporate paintball took a hit this year. And in typical fashion corporate paintball is standing around wondering who farted while knee deep in their own poo.

Have you thumbed through a paintball magazine lately? They are all beginning to look like copies of Soldier of Fortune Magazine. Arm yourself today with the new RAP4 T68 pistol complete with "rubber grips for a firm grip in intense situations"!

There's an ad for S.W.A.T. boots squeezed in between the SR25 Sniper Kit and the �very first magazine-fed pistol. And have you seen the guy on page 55 of the January 2006 issue of APG? He looks like he just crawled out of a spyder hole with what looks like (forgive me, I'm not up my assault rifle identification) an AK-47!

Later there's the SIM-4. For $569 you get a paintball gun that looks like a version of the military M-4, complete with scope, laser sight and mounted tactical flashlight (all cleverly wrapped around a standard Spyder/Piranha blow back body). "Equip yourself with this and you are ready to rule the battlefield!" (How funny that a basic $70 Spyder/Piranha will shoot just as far and as hard and as accurate and is easier to break down and clean.)

On the same page is a paintball gun that looks like an assault shotgun.

In the same magazine a company called MILTEC offers the MT-65 M-16, the MT-65 M-16 A1, the MT-65 M-16 A2, the MT-65 M-16 Elite, the MT-65 M16 RIS, the MT-66 ASP, the MT-66 A1, the MT-66 A2, the MT-66 Elite, the MT-66 CQB, and the MT-66 RIS! Oh, and don�t forget the MT-75 MP5. I especially like the fake banana clip version.

In the same APG there is a tear out 2006 calendar. Nine of the twelve months look like recruiter ads for military special operations units. There's a ad in the calendar for a company that will, for a small $200 fee, paint your A5 paintball gun with tigerstripe, woodland, urban tigerstripe or desert digital camo paint.

And this is how we want to present paintball to the mainstream?

Just a short 11 years ago the paintball world joined together to discourage field owners from giving their fields names like Blood and Guts Paintball or Kill and Carnage Paintball Field or In The Crosshairs Paintball Battlefield (no kidding, cross my heart and hope to die, names of paintball fields at the time) and even went so far as to discourage playing in BDUs (military battle dress uniforms).

And today, just when we had Mom convinced that paintball was a neat little activity for her 12 year old's birthday party we bring in the Delta Force. Just when Dad finds a cool game he can share with his son he finds himself face to face with an assault rifled, side arm carrying Westmoreland in camo paint! And just when church youth groups are coming someone in the congregation decides they don't want to be associated with paramilitary training camps!

Awww, but who am I kidding. I have a tank at the field. And I use to play military with my brothers when I was growing up. 'Course, it was with sticks for guns and pine cones for grenades. And then again I stopped playing military and joined for real when I was nineteen. Maybe the 22 real years served (four in special operations) took all the military fun out of me.

Hell, yeah... let's grab a bag of bullets (paintballs) and go kill (mark) some commies (fellow players)!

(to be continued...)