In a couple of the more recent gun debate threads, the point was made that the population base of rural people in the US is shrinking. The people who traditionally hunt, engage in pest control on farms, or who simply utilize the space available for casual target shooting. It occurred to me that in the more urbanized population today there is one form of shooting that has grown in popularity in recent years: paintball/airgun gaming, in which participants engage in mock battle with non-lethal firearms. My question is, how useful or relevent is paintball practice to real firearms tactical training? Does it actually teach how to respond to an armed attack, or is it more like a grownup version of playing cops and robbers?
I doubt any studies have been done. My guess is yes it would be very helpful. I don’t have a cite but I’ve read that studies have been done regarding rural vs city folk in a survival-type fire fight situation with paintball weapons and the city group coming out on top. Hunting deer, apparently, is different than hunting man.
This is my WAG, as someone who used to regularly paintball, and occasionally goes to the rifle range.
I imagine that paintball, as people currently play it, would have very little value for actual self defense or combat. It’s a game… so there’s little, if any, discipline involved for the vast majority involved. The only skills that I think might be vaguely applicable are things like snap shooting, where you spot a target and try to get a shot off as fast as possible. Perhaps also the basics of firearms handling, but many paintballers are so sloppy here that they probably have learned a lot of dangerous bad habits. Since it is just a game, there isn’t much real penalty for shooting your team mates (or the refs!) accidentally, aside from some ribbing from your friends between rounds. So there’s a total lack of discipline here. See something move? Pump as many rounds in that general direction as possible, and wait for someone to tell you they’ve been hit. As a result, there’s lots of friendly fire in most games I’ve been in.
Now there are various law enforcement agencies that use paintball as a training tool, and some people that take it very seriously. Still, for the most part, it’s just a slightly more grownup version of cops and robbers.
Not to mention it does very little for marksmanship, as paintballs don’t accurately translate into rifle rounds in terms of aim, distance, etc.
To be a bit more specific, here are the skills that I’ve learned that might be useful in a real-life situation:
How to use cover, expose as little as your body as possible, and a bit on how to avoid making a lot of noise. Conversely, paintballs move slow enough that it’s not hard to see them coming from moderately far away, and duck out of the way… This would be a bad thing to rely on in a real firefight.
How to aim quickly and accurately. However, real firearms usually have very different sorts of sights, and with paintball you’re at close enough range to not worry about sights most of the time. And you typically carry hundreds of paintballs, and matches are short, so the solution here is to send as much paint at your target as you possibly can. Many people “aim” by walking their stream of paint towards a target, which honestly is necessary at longer range.
If you make a point of it (like I did), it can be a good time to practice good firearms handling techniques. Basic rules like being aware of where you’re pointing the paintball gun, and making sure it’s always pointed at something you’re willing to shoot, since you should also assume that it’s always loaded. From what I’ve seen, however, precious few do this.
Honestly, I’d have little confidence in using any of this in a real situation.
There is also the matter that in paintball thick brush serves as cover, but would do nothing to stop bullets. Someone who has done both made the comment once that in paintball your reaction to gunshots is to turn toward the sound and try to see where the shooter is. In combat the immediate reaction is to hit the ground and cover, and then try to find out where the shooter is.
Paintball can be very useful to train already trained military and police personnel to work as a team. But it doesn’t go the other way. No fire discipline. Lousy cover techniques.
What about if we developed paintball using advanced RFID and Lasers?
Surely the tech must be around now to very accurately map an area, use lasers etc for targeting and then have a built electric zapper to the uniform for when you get shot?
Like tag, with lasers?
Whatever would we call that game? 
The army has a system called MILES that is essentially MILSPEC laser tag for training.
As a former (and possibly returning) airsoft player, I see more and more tactical training sites opting to use airsoft guns for tactical training. Not so much the shooting aspect, as much like with paintball the rules of cover vs. concealment and such don’t work quite right, but for movement and just general weapons awareness.
The advantage of Airsoft is that the weapons are generally 1:1 scale replica’s of existing weapons systems.
Of course gamesmanship comes into play with MILES just like paintball. A bush as good as a bunker for cover. But beware of the OC (Observer Controller) with the God Gun.
In paintball “effective use of cover” means hiding behind a reasonably dense bush.
If you tried that in a combat situation you’ll find that leaves lack the necessary robustness to stop rifle bullets.
A lad I know runs a paintball organisation, and he said “professionals” (soldiers, police etc) do worse at paintball than amateurs, because they are trained to use hard cover, which limits their opportunities. Amateurs are happy to hide behind thick grass which means they get closer to their targets.
Indeed.
In a former life I designed several MILES simulated weapons and training targets (Like streetlights you could “shoot out” with a MILES equipped rifle).
Paintball does lend itself to basic teamwork of laying down suppressive fire to allow a teammate to advance, take a covered position and then lay down suppressive fire for the next member to advance. Yeah, the sorts of effective cover can be vastly different, but the technique works well for both situations.
Another thing you get from paintball is an understanding of how adrenalyn is going to affect you in a combat situation.
What I learned from playing paintball is that I would never, ever want to do that using real fireams. It’s just way too easy to get shot. In paintball, you might get a bruise, and you feel bad because you’re out of that game. With real firearms, you’re dead (or at least suffering major hurt).
Personally, I think that if we required the decision makers to go out and play a few paintball rounds before deciding to send the troops somewhere, we might get very different decisions.
My opinion on this issue has nothing to do with the skill level of City folk vs a country bumpkin.
It has to do with ones psychological level of awareness. The metro hunters in the area where I hunt are much more through and disciplined hunters than the locals.
Of course there are great exceptions to this but the “opportunity” is limited much more when one has to travel hundreds of miles to hunt vs me living 18 miles from my hunting area or closer.
Related, there are simunitions that are essentially paintballs designed to be fired through real guns. I always thought that’d be a much cooler way to play paintball.
Paintballers, IME, pick up a lot of very bad habits due to the lack of range, penetration, and accuracy typical of paintball guns. They can be a valuable training aid, but the parameters for training have to be very strictly defined and controlled by a competent trainer.
The typical paintballers I’ve seen in action would be dead in a matter of seconds on a real battlefield. One properly trained soldier with a rifle would be able to elimate a whole squad of them PDQ.
Interestingly, I remember reading an article by someone who said the opposite: that combat vets were often better at paintball, because they knew it wasn’t real and were more willing to take risks that might get them painted but would have a big payoff, as opposed to amateurs who tried to imitate war movies.
This was a while ago, though, when paintball was fairly new, and I suspect there’s a definite culture now that sees it as a game in and of itself, rather than playing war.