Paint Ball

viagra

This page is based on a conversation held on a Internet mailing list and is pretty much my opinion ... Not the opinion of the NRA, BSA or anyone else. ;)

Now, as to training for Paint ball... As an NRA Instructor / NCS Shooting Sports Director, I would be very uncomfortable having to teach a Paint ball safety course. Why? Because I feel that it is inconsistent with the safety instruction we DRILL into all of our other gun related safety courses. I have always been told it's easier to teach someone to do something correctly than it is to re-teach someone that was taught incorrectly. "Keep the gun pointed in a safe direction" isn't the same thing as "try not to shoot your opponent in the head or from closer than 3 feet".

I seem to remember a leadership guideline that went something like "lead by example" (sorry, I couldn't resist tying in the WB discussion). If in my rifle safety course I say "never point a gun at anything you don't intend to kill", but then a week later I'm pointing a Paint ball gun at one of my rifle students, am I leading by example? Am I being consistent? Did my previous instruction get diluted? Did my credibility go down?

Sorry, I'll get off my soapbox now.....

First off, paint ball guns are not toys, they are guns with less than lethal projectiles.

As we teach in the Cub Scout Range Officer classes and in the Rifle Shooting merit badge program, BB guns are NOT toys and paint ball guns aren't toys either. The BB guns recommended for Cub Scout's are supposed to shoot 8 grain BB's at less than 350 fps (2.2 ft-lb of energy). Paint ball guns shoot 50 grain paint balls about 300 fps for 9.9 ft-lb of energy - so a paint ball will transfer almost 5 times the energy of a BB - it's just a much softer projectile with a larger surface area.

With that said, I didn't say that I thought the kids couldn't tell the difference, I said that I am uncomfortable teaching differing (and incompatible) safety lectures. For me it comes down to the fact that I'm really not comfortable teaching anyone to point a gun at someone else. From an instructor liability point of view, I don't know what my liability insurer would say about that either. :)

Now, do I think this incompatibility will confuse kids? Not the vast majority... but if even one kid makes an incorrect decision based on my instruction, that is one too many. Do we have a very small number of kids in scouting that might not be able to differentiate? Possibly. We had an incident at camp this summer with a boy that attempted to pick up a rifle in anger - before it happened, I wouldn't have thought that likely either.... Thanks to the quick response of the instructor, nothing happened, but it could have!

There is always the possibility that someone can get hurt... even walking from bed to the bathroom. Do I think it's a good idea to lower the risk? Sure. Do I think we need to totally eliminate all risk in Scouting? Even if I did (and I don't) it isn't possible. We just need to lower risk where the risk is lowerable without hurting the program too much.

Now, as a follow up to our discussion of ability, I think NOLS has a really good definition of the different levels of competence. And we seen to have differing opinions on what level of competence to expect from Boy Scouts. As an instructor, I have to assume that all of my students are novice until they prove otherwise, you seen to assume a higher level.

In today's urban society, I have seen few youth that I would classify as proficient with guns -- at least at the level I get them when teaching the merit badge.