I’m co-owner of a paintball store. Of all the articles and magazines I’ve read over the years I’ve never heard of a death from a paintball. The only permanant injuries I know of are to the eye.
Paintballs are a biodegradable vegetable oil based dye. The barrels are smooth bore and its a uneven gob of goo in the ball. Using a scope or even sights are laughable. During game play the markers (the PC term for gun) is set to 280 feet per second. The accuracy is pretty dead on at about 100 yards. Farther than that you are shooting up in the air, lobbing the balls more than a flat line shot.
If you crank the spring pressure up over 280 fps the balls will go faster and farther but the accuracy goes to hell. More often than not the balls break in the barrel.
My crossman BB gun shoots 720 feet per second. 2 and a half times more than my painball markers.
I don’t own a store so I’ll defer to your experience but “dead-on accuracy” at 100 yards sounds like wishful thinking to me Shooting level with the barrel 5 feet off the ground a paintball can’t carry more than about 160 feet (by my calculation, 167 feet, assuming that the ball stays at 300fps the whole way which is wildly wrong). People certainly lob shots for extra distance, and a Flatline barrel adds a lot of range, but accuracy at long ranges is way down (like you said, sights and scopes are silly). People who get hit at 150 feet are generally getting tagged due to either a lucky shot or the fact that the shooter is ripping off a string of paint (modern markers with a light electronic trigger can be fired semi-auto at very high speeds, 12-20+ balls per second) and “walking” their fire into the target.
My experience is closer to Valgard’s than Mr. Goob’s. Perhaps he meant feet instead of yards? I don’t think my Spider will even throw a ball 100 yds, which I think would be a stretch for my son (who is a wicked accurate sniper with his flatline.) And when hit at distance, it is not at all uncommon for balls to bounce off without breaking.
A while back an acquaintance of my wife’s was complaining that he had to spend mucho time and money associated with his brilliant college-aged son getting caught in a neighboring state for a paintball driveby. I’ll have to ask for more details and whether she ever heard how it ended up, but I recall it was being treated FAR more seriously than a minor matter.
That depends on what the definition of “dead on” and “marker” is . I’ve been exposed to salvoes from markers over 15 years ago from between 100 feet and 100 yards that all were within a couple feet of my center of mass, and that’s with my running laterally.
Then again, those were from a super-charged state-of-the-art (for then) marker, whereas my lowend(for then, not sure if they even make them anymore,) pump-loaded smoothbore would visibly arc totally inaccurately at less than 100 feet.
My experience is pretty close to yours. I had an automag with a few aftermarket tricks added to it, and 100 yards just isn’t happening. 50 yards would be considered extreme range. Equipment may have improved since I last played (late 90s), but I doubt it’s improved that much.
This is an incorrect statement, simply because it’s far too generalized. The definitions for assault and/or battery vary wildly by jurisdiction, in fact; there is no one single, universal definition of either. Some states do define a battery as any physical contact regardless of harmfulness, but other states would include an unwanted, but harmless, touch in the charge of simple assault. Battery, when it’s defined, invariably involves some form of contact, generally, but different states have different criteria for determining when a battery has occurred; some require physical harm, or the intent to do physical harm, others define it as you have, with any unwanted contact covered under the umbrella of “battery.”
Well once the ball leaves the barrel ballistics runs the whole show, and barring something funky like the Flatline (which puts backspin on the ball and really changes the flight path), the same paintball at the same muzzle velocity will fly the same, whether it comes out of a $70 Spyder or a $1500 Ego. As I understand it about the most critical factor is the barrel-paint match (paintballs are nominally 0.68 inches in diameter but actual size varies by up to about +/- 0.01 inches, and barrels are available in a variety of different bores to account for this). If the barrel is too small for the paint you get jams and breaks. If the barrel is too large you waste gas, lose velocity and the paint comes out at a somewhat random angle from the barrel, spoiling accuracy. Paintball forums are about 60% arguments about this topic.
My Autococker is more accurate than my friends’ A5s due to the much lower recoil. It just doesn’t hop around like their markers, so at close range (which I’m betting is under 100 feet) I can place shots much more accurately, however they can outrange me with their Flatline barrels. It evens out.
Back on topic, if some unsuspecting person gets shot with either one, they can get a nasty welt, and a shot to the head can do serious damage.
Shooting level with the barrel 5 feet off the ground a paintball can’t carry more than about 160 feet (by my calculation, 167 feet, assuming that the ball stays at 300fps the whole way which is wildly wrong). People certainly lob shots for extra distance, and a Flatline barrel adds a lot of range, but accuracy at long ranges is way down (like you said, sights and scopes are silly). People who get hit at 150 feet are generally getting tagged due to either a lucky shot or the fact that the shooter is ripping off a string of paint (modern markers with a light electronic trigger can be fired semi-auto at very high speeds, 12-20+ balls per second) and “walking” their fire into the target.