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March 30, 2026
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Hi everyone,
Collecting and studying Winchester firearms is fascinating and it’s interesting to see how the principles of handling, safety and trigger control translate across different types of guns. In my experience, practicing with paintball guns can actually reinforce some of these fundamentals.
Paintball guns may not fire live rounds, but they still teach grip, stance, aiming and reaction timing, skills that feel surprisingly relevant when handling real firearms responsibly. Even though the purposes differ, there’s a shared appreciation for mechanics, control and precision.
December 12, 2019
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CaseyFields said
Hi everyone,
Collecting and studying Winchester firearms is fascinating and it’s interesting to see how the principles of handling, safety and trigger control translate across different types of guns. In my experience, practicing with paintball guns can actually reinforce some of these fundamentals.
Paintball guns may not fire live rounds, but they still teach grip, stance, aiming and reaction timing, skills that feel surprisingly relevant when handling real firearms responsibly. Even though the purposes differ, there’s a shared appreciation for mechanics, control and precision.
Casey, I don’t disagree with what you say about grip, stance, aiming, etc. But I have an inherent aversion to paintball as a sport.
I was taught, and taught all my kids gun safety, which started with ‘never swing a muzzle through a person; never point the firearm at a person, etc.’. That had to be ingrained, along with ‘every firearm is loaded, always, until you personally and safely inspect it’.
How can you instill all those safety doctrines when some young person goes to a paintball range and spends the day aiming at people then pulling the trigger.
Just my opinion, but a long standing frustration with me. I know a lot of responsible hunters and target shooters enjoy and participate in the sport of Paintball, I just was never comfortable with it.
NP
Nevada Paul
Life Member NRA
August 14, 2021
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Not paintball, but Airsoft guns & matches. The airsoft guns are licensed by the gun companies and they have a whole section on collectible replicas. My 11 year old started his collection. They fire a .20 gram 6mm poly carb BB around 300 to 380 FPS for matches, and I can tell you, they hurt. Full auto is not allowed in a match, but in the backyard anything goes.
January 8, 2025
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A lot of nuance here. My 4 year olds have cap guns. Now that they can understand things a little better I’ve started teaching gun safety. I think about it the same way as when they were 2 and had a fascination with outlets. I’ll take any advice on teaching kids gun safety and responsibility. Any toy, paintball, air soft, whatever will familiarize someone with the platform, then I teach firearm safety from there.
September 22, 2011
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I fall into the camp of if you are pointing the business end of a firearm at someone, you had better have a really good reason for doing so and had better make sure your shot counts!
When I was a kid, I wasn’t allowed to have toy guns, my father said that when I was old enough I could have the real thing. The trouble is, I didn’t know when that was, and he decided that would be when I was 12 or 13 years old. In hindsight, when I see some of these 7 or 8 years old old kids harvesting deer, I wish that could have been me, but I also think maybe that’s too young to have a real firearm and handle it safely at ALL times.
I also appreciate my father purchased a used .22 rifle as my first firearm, and, since then I’ve never looked at a new firearm. That’s like driving a new car off the lot plus you sacrifice a lot in the way of quality as well.
August 14, 2021
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So I guess none of you all served in the military where your M16 / M60 had blank firing adapters and a miles vest? Actually under NYS law, neither paintball or airsoft guns are classified as firearms. I personally don’t play, but I don’t have issues with kids playing on a regulated field.
November 5, 2014
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Howdy Y’all-
I’m going to show my age, and probably my closet Puritan demeanor here… But I agree (more than 100%) with Nevada Paul…
Firearms are SERIOUS business… They can HURT people… ANYTHING that minimizes that, whether it be cap guns, paint ball, air soft, or (worst of all) VIDEO GAMES, is NOT a good thing…
If you want to learn how to use a firearm against human targets, join the US Military, not the local paintball club… Pretty sure their rules are strict and penalties for slipping up are UNFORGIVING!!!
Gun safety comes FIRST… ALL guns are loaded until you have determined they are not. You NEVER point a gun (even one you “know” is unloaded) at anyone/anything you don’t want (or at least wouldn’t mind seeing) DEAD. Any knowledgeable gun person would/should (at best) be “uncomfortable” if I were to (even inadvertantly or briefly) point the muzzle of a firearm in his/her direction…
My Kids (now all adults) were taught like Paul said above… I’m pretty sure they understand “range safety”, between me, my Dad, and the NRA Hunter/Firearms safety courses they took. I have very few (one) gun in my house that’s loaded (a M1911 pistol in condition 3), but with Kids I think you have to instill the NRA “Eddie the Eagle” thing… ALL guns are loaded ALL the time and potentially deadly if you or your compadres do not know what to do with it. If you don’t know (which is a very common thing these days) then DON’T touch it. Find someone who does or call the Cops…
Remember the late Jon Eric Hexum (or even Alec Baldwin)… Ignorance is FAR from bliss!!!
Just my unsolicited take…
Lou
WACA 9519; Studying Pre-64 Model 70 Winchesters
November 7, 2015
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Old safety habits die hard and I’m OK with that. I remember one LE in-service felony stop class when I purposely did not draw my (unloaded) service weapon because our “suspects” were instructors or other students. I don’t need any practice pointing a handgun so I was more interested in the mechanics and proper commands. I also won’t call for a bird on a skeet or trap field with my finger on the trigger. If some kid wants to play with Nerf guns I’ll set up some targets. I have no problem addressing a threat with a loaded weapon but I have too much respect for them to point a weapon of any type at something I am not willing to destroy. That principle was driven home to me over 50 years ago and I still remember it. Call it KISS, call it old school. I call it common sense.
Mike
January 8, 2025
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TXGunNut said
Old safety habits die hard and I’m OK with that. I remember one LE in-service felony stop class when I purposely did not draw my (unloaded) service weapon because our “suspects” were instructors or other students. I don’t need any practice pointing a handgun so I was more interested in the mechanics and proper commands. I also won’t call for a bird on a skeet or trap field with my finger on the trigger. If some kid wants to play with Nerf guns I’ll set up some targets. I have no problem addressing a threat with a loaded weapon but I have too much respect for them to point a weapon of any type at something I am not willing to destroy. That principle was driven home to me over 50 years ago and I still remember it. Call it KISS, call it old school. I call it common sense.
Mike
Common sense seems to be less common these days. There’s a big difference between kids playing army or cowboys and indians in the yard and hunting or range time. Just my opinion but knowing the difference between a toy and a real firearm is where it starts. There’s several videos you can see online where people talk about such accidents. My children play with toys and respect my tools. They have toy hammers and screw drivers. When they use real hammers and screw driver’s it’s completely different.
January 20, 2023
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I was born in the month of the Normandy Invasion and played with boys being raised by their grandfathers, assisted by their mothers and grandmothers. It was a time when nobody disputed a boy’s need for a permanent and reliable father-figure in the house.
When I was old enough to hold a cap pistol, I got one — a very good copy of a Colt SAA, with cartridges capable of being loaded with circular paper caps, held in place by a cast metal “bullet”. The assembly looked remarkably like a .45 Colt round, except the base of the case was free of a primer cap. There were six of them and they were loaded through a gate. The hammer had a half-cock position. The set included a tooled, strong-side holster and a wide buscadero style belt. With this rig, I defended myself against marauding bands of Comanche and slew many bad guys, among whom were numbered several Chicoms – the Korean War was ongoing at the time. And some Germans and Japanese combatants as well.
One day, a neighborhood boy whose father was half-Apache, introduced me to his father’s weapons closet, while all the adults were elsewhere. It consisted of a 32/20 caliber Winchester 1892 carbine that was fully loaded and on half-cock; and a Colt SAA 38/40, loaded with five rounds. Because both of us knew the difference between a toy and a loaded weapon, nothing untoward occurred.
At the time, weapons were in most, although not all, homes in my working-class neighborhood. Not in some country hamlet, but a polluted Gulf Coast industrial exurb.
The prevailing attitude in the early to mid-Fifties, at least among my father and his friends and fellow employees, most of whom were World War Ii veterans employed in the petrochemical industry as skilled craftsmen, was that play with toy guns was healthy and good preparation for further training with, first, BB or pellet guns, them real guns — a .22 rifle or a .410 shotgun. From an early age, my father expected me to know the difference between a gun and a toy. As far as I know, my peers were similarly constrained.
My own sons were similarly trained and as adults are flawless in their safe handling of firearms, at home and in the field.
I think children of normal intelligence are capable of distinguishing between toy and weapons if properly taught and it serves no useful purpose to forbid them the former in ord,er to train them to be safe with the latter. But I had a demanding father and was very much a hands-on father to my own sons.
Perhaps that mode of child-rearing has gone out of style. It had one advantage for the child. If he knew he could rely on my word as Immutable and Consistent Law — and that I would treat him with dignity and praise his accomplishments — there was little need for any sort of punishment. Every boy hungers for his father’s approval. And that is a powerful tool.
There is more than one way to do most things. I disagree that allowing a child to play with toy guns is irresponsible parenting per se.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
September 22, 2011
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FWIW, here’s an example of not treating every firearm as if it’s loaded—and this individual was once a presidential candidate:
“On December 30, 1912, at the age of twelve, Stevenson accidentally killed Ruth Merwin, a 16-year-old friend, while demonstrating drill technique with a rifle, inadvertently left loaded, during a party at the Stevenson home.”
January 8, 2025
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I believe this is troll. Still, good conversation.
January 20, 2023
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mrcvs said
FWIW, here’s an example of not treating every firearm as if it’s loaded—and this individual was once a presidential candidate:
“On December 30, 1912, at the age of twelve, Stevenson accidentally killed Ruth Merwin, a 16-year-old friend, while demonstrating drill technique with a rifle, inadvertently left loaded, during a party at the Stevenson home.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adlai_Stevenson_II
Stevenson was born into wealth and was the son of a very busy and powerful news executive. He graduate from Choate, Princeton, and (eventually) Harvard Law. A very bright man and a fairly able governor of Illinois, he always struck me as lacking common sense, which the facts of this accident do nothing to dispel. I doubt he confused the rifle with a toy. He just failed to observe Rules One, Two, and Three.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
November 7, 2015
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MidwestCrisis said
I believe this is troll. Still, good conversation.
I think I got a whiff of that as well.
Mike
November 5, 2014
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Zebulon said
I think children of normal intelligence are capable of distinguishing between toy and weapons if properly taught and it serves no useful purpose to forbid them the former in order to train them to be safe with the latter. But I had a demanding father and was very much a hands-on father to my own sons.
Perhaps that mode of child-rearing has gone out of style. There is more than one way to do most things. I disagree that allowing a child to play with toy guns is irresponsible parenting per se.
Hi Zeb-
The issue IMHO is well summarized by your statement above… “IF PROPERLY TAUGHT”… Who’s doing the teaching these days??? If a Kid is learning about guns from movies, video games, etc., platforms that consistently dehumanized the “target”, then it’s not a good thing… I wouldn’t worry about your Kids or their Kids, or the Children of (at least most of) the Folks who frequent this site.
Heck… I learned to shoot (pretty well if I dare say so…) with a Crossman BB gun… But I KNEW that my hide would be worthless if I misstepped in any way…
Absent Parents, the only thing worse than what we’ve got is for Big Brother to step in and save us from ourselves…
Just my take…
Lou
WACA 9519; Studying Pre-64 Model 70 Winchesters
January 20, 2023
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Lou, I don’t disagree with you that absent parents – whether in body or mind — are an enormous social problem and have been since Grog and Thak produced their first little near-human.
There are parents who should not be allowed to play with matches, much less own a deadly weapon, but they vote too and any attempt to deprive or regulate them winds up disarming the virtuous and trustworthy.
One of the benefits of high school ROTC and other youth organizations is they can, if allowed, teach gun safety, a now politically charged expression that no longer means safe gun handling to the Left.
Would I prefer a parent do it? In all honesty it depends on the parent. Because I can’t pick and choose, better a qualified public school teacher than nobody. That assumes the course curriculum involves much more than “DON’T TOUCH AND CALL 911.”
it will never happen because gun control is a religion of the Left.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
November 19, 2006
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Interesting discussion. Many valid perspectives. I’ve never participated in paintball and don’t recall ever even holding a paintball gun. I can see the contrast between the serious side (e.g. safe gun handling) vs. shooting at each other in a paintball game (i.e. fun).
This reminds me of spending time with my grandparents in the early 70’s. They were farmers and very hardworking people. They had very similar histories, attitudes and generally were always on the same page. They would enjoy watching a TV program in the evenings and my grandmother’s favorite show was Mash. She really enjoyed the comedic aspect of it. My grandfather refused to watch it. I recall his statement on the topic: “there’s nothing funny about war.” I don’t think he would have thought much of paintball games.
There’s many paths that lead us to the attitudes and perspectives we take. None of us have walked down identical paths.
