Comparing Real Firearms and Paintball Guns: Lessons from Both Worlds|Winchester Rifles|Forum|Winchester Collector

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

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. 

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. 

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

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. 

I believe this is troll.  Still, good conversation. 

MidwestCrisis said
I believe this is troll.  Still, good conversation. 
  

I think I got a whiff of that as well. 

Mike

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. 

I learned like Zeb. I participated in many neighborhood ‘“battles “ with toy guns. The real guns were readily accessible in my house. I knew what they were for and how to use them by age 10. The actual firearms were reserved for when we ventured out of town to some rural property we owned. My father would let me wander for hours alone as a young lad with a 22 rifle or my grandfather’s vintage Winchester model 12 shotgun. I probably shot some critters that in retrospect I wouldn’t today, but knew enough to know my backstop before pulling the trigger. 

I raised my son the same way. Born into a later generation, he was all in to air soft wars with his friends. I still find 6 mm plastic balls outside around the house. I took him hunting for days at a time in the Alaska wilderness starting at age 5. He shot his first big game animal, a muskox, at age 7. He knew the difference between air soft and the lethality of the real McCoy. And, importantly, so did his friends. Everyone has guns in Alaska. Many are propped up in the arctic entryway. They’re ubiquitous. Those boys were accustomed to their presence and had safe firearm instruction. The guns weren’t a mystical siren calling to them when adults weren’t around. 

Both Dimrod and Zeb’s comments resonate with me. 

Firearms were ‘ubiquitous’ in my household as well. My children grew up with them in plain sight. It was my job to ‘demystify’,  and teach and maintain safety through all the curious and formative years.

My favorite teaching experience was to place a revolver, semi auto pistol, bolt action rifle, semi-auto rifle, and shotgun in conspicuous places around the living room, with all the actions closed.  I’d then tell the kids that we’d learn how to identify a ‘loaded and unsafe’ firearm from across the room.  I’d then ask them to tell me if each firearm was ‘loaded’ or ‘unloaded’.  The correct answer, of course, is that they were always loaded until you picked them up and personally made them ‘safe’.

So I’d pick up a  firearm, demonstrate that it was unloaded and safe, then put it back in place. A few minutes later, I’d ask again, ‘is that rifle loaded?’.  The initial response would be ‘no, it’s safe’. But I’d correct them that ‘no, it’s loaded. It is loaded until you walk over to it, pick it up, and safely determine that it is not.’ 

My kids took hunter safety classes at 12 years of age so they could start big game hunting. I always said that if they learned anything new in those classes, then I hadn’t done my job well enough.

Paul