Can Airsoft translate to real firearm skill?

[Stratton Oakmont]

as for range time, the regulars don't get as much as you'd thing, after training & various qualifications, it's often likely that you'll barely live fire until you get the heads up to deploy, & then it's only to dust off the cobwebs & zero weapons, its likely that reserves & even some cadet units will do more live firing, just to keep them interested, such are the budgeting issues these days.

bingo

 

[Druid799]

Well here’s a turn up for the books I’m agreeing with several ‘contentious’ comments .

i agree with Osteoshot’s comment about lack of range time , recently talking to a serving marine who’d just come of a stint of maritime patrol in the Middle East and he was saying about how little live fire time they have to do there job effectively  (we were actually talking about the lack of training time due to cost cutting) AND I can also see triggers point about his friend dropping his barrel because he was subconsciously anticipating the recoil that he was used too when shooting .

I don’t really seen any benefits in static shooting from using Airsoft for all the reasons given against .

BUT I still stand by it can be of some use , Tackles example , room/building clearance it’s fast and aggressive so you can get shots down range on live targets relatively safely so how can that not be of even a small benefit ? 

 

[Stratton Oakmont]

i appear to be giving the wrong impression but without trying to be too salty;

if if you have the luxury of owning a mk23 nbb pistol and a gbb pistol,

load them both up with gas and take turns shooting the gbb and then the non Bb.

do you shoot them the same?

do they feel the same?

or do you subconsciously adjust as soon as you pick it up as you know they are different.

if you pull a gun off target then those skill at arms are not being observed correctly

 

[EvilMonkee]

As this appears to be getting out of hand,

im trigger happy - I stand by my comment, the second paragraph I referred to is b.s, however just because you were told this does not mean I think you are responsible for this dubious fact hence my reference to the paragraph and your friends comment and not directly at you.

Re Evil monkee, these are old jokes and your lack of response is about all they are worth, touché 

musica, you made this personal, I don't believe I have trolled you but if you can refute any of the comments I have made, good on you I'd love to hear them. 

As evil monkee has said he's serving military I think there is a good chance he can change your mind that his average day isn't full of commando rolls, knife throwing, shooting endless ammunition and shouting breach, breach, breach as he kicks doors down.

sorry if life in the para's isn't Hollywood enough for you

Sorry but I have better things to do with my evening than reply to some forum Johnny Come Lately.  

 

[Stratton Oakmont]

Sorry but I have better things to do with my evening than reply to some forum Johnny Come Lately.  

Loving the irony, well played 

 

[TheFull9]

Everyone I've ever known who's done a lot of shooting and also some airsofting has come to pretty much a similar conclusion - airsoft is absolutely spot on for practising reloads, manipulating the safety, working on your grip and stance, sight picture and alignment, moving with the gun, doing what you need to do with the sling, building familiarity with accessories and electronics and most importantly being safe which is the number one priority that massively offends many airsofters if you so much a mention it in a whisper... but obviously airsoft doesn't replicate the exact recoil of a most firearms and triggers tend to be a bit different in feel and weight.   You'll also struggle to gain any proficiency at hitting things at 100-500m+ with a bb gat, though again once you've had some proper instruction you can do a little bit of position and hold practice with a gun that's the same size, shape and weight as a real one.

The actual recoil controlling part however depends massively on the weapon in question, which seems to have been entirely ignored thus far from my skim read.  Hitting things at any distance with rifles is orders of magnitude easier than with pistols for the vast majority of people and some rifles are far easier to shoot than other rifles.  You can tune an AR-15's gas system in a 1000 different ways, run ammo that's got much less chamber pressure than military stuff and fit muzzle brakes that make recoil so damn close to zero it makes no odds at all.  There are plenty of GBB airsoft guns out there which recoil the same amount as a lot of ARs, bearing in mind that are more AR variants out there than anybody can even keep track of at this point and there's is a gargantuan range of characteristics represented amongst them.

I filmed a load of stuff (that's shockingly dated looking now) while taking an AR training course over in the US 6 years ago and if you watch the instructor here shooting at the start of the video you'll notice the gun just doesn't bloody move:

I was no John Wick myself on that course by any stretch but I was safe and performed ok overall.  I had essentially no AR shooting experience before attending, but I had fired a few rounds of 556 during my time in the raf, gotten a little bit of marksmanship instruction and I'd spent a lot of time with AEG and GBB airsoft M4/AR types rifles, so I had zero issues picking up the real thing, knowing how to work it and do a vaguely passable job of shooting it.

All of my own experience has very much mirrored what was shown and discussed in the T.Rex video, as well as the older video that's up on the Haley Strategic channel.  You can google plenty of articles that have been written on this topic as well but people with tons of experience with both guns and airsoft and they echo what I've said (breach-bang-clear has a good one up if memory serves, to give one example).

 

[Stratton Oakmont]

2 hours ago, TheFull9 said:

Everyone I've ever known who's done a lot of shooting and also some airsofting has come to pretty much a similar conclusion - airsoft is absolutely spot on for practising reloads, manipulating the safety, working on your grip and stance, sight picture and alignment, moving with the gun, doing what you need to do with the sling, building familiarity with accessories and electronics and most importantly being safe which is the number one priority that massively offends many airsofters if you so much a mention it in a whisper... but obviously airsoft doesn't replicate the exact recoil of a most firearms and triggers tend to be a bit different in feel and weight.   You'll also struggle to gain any proficiency at hitting things at 100-500m+ with a bb gat, though again once you've had some proper instruction you can do a little bit of position and hold practice with a gun that's the same size, shape and weight as a real one.

The actual recoil controlling part however depends massively on the weapon in question, which seems to have been entirely ignored thus far from my skim read.  Hitting things at any distance with rifles is orders of magnitude easier than with pistols for the vast majority of people and some rifles are far easier to shoot than other rifles.  You can tune an AR-15's gas system in a 1000 different ways, run ammo that's got much less chamber pressure than military stuff and fit muzzle brakes that make recoil so damn close to zero it makes no odds at all.  There are plenty of GBB airsoft guns out there which recoil the same amount as a lot of ARs, bearing in mind that are more AR variants out there than anybody can even keep track of at this point and there's is a gargantuan range of characteristics represented amongst them.

I filmed a load of stuff (that's shockingly dated looking now) while taking an AR training course over in the US 6 years ago and if you watch the instructor here shooting at the start of the video you'll notice the gun just doesn't bloody move:

Yup.

disappointed to see I've been proved wrong, turns out you do drop your barrel after the last shot, look it's practically between his legs at 4secs on the video

 

[BibbsOnTour]

Petition to lock the thread as it's literally going in circles at this point??

 

[kasaran]

Yup.

disappointed to see I've been proved wrong, turns out you do drop your barrel after the last shot, look it's practically between his legs at 4secs on the video

Visually suspect as a safety practice, but it is 'murica, not known for stringant gun handing practice.  Though he might just be aware that every round has been fired, so there is no danger and just being lazy with it.

Curious as to the caliber etc mind, barely looked like it kicked at all.  Valid point @TheFull9, always half thought the same in regards reloading and general handing.  Though i would have thought the weapon balance would be difference between RS and AEG making you hold it different?
 

 

[Stratton Oakmont]

Visually suspect as a safety practice, but it is 'murica, not known for stringant gun handing practice.  Though he might just be aware that every round has been fired, so there is no danger and just being lazy with it.

Curious as to the caliber etc mind, barely looked like it kicked at all.  Valid point @TheFull9, always half thought the same in regards reloading and general handing.  Though i would have thought the weapon balance would be difference between RS and AEG making you hold it different?
 

In this case I'm not going speculate to the calibre or assume just because it looks like a .556 rifle it is one just take the full 9s word that it is. 

If that is so the amount of rounds that these courses must go through I imagine it would be a bog standard load that cycles reliably in most rifles and doesn't cost too much.

as regard the hold you can hold an Aeg any old how if you want to as it's pretty much recoil free 

as you will witness most weekends to no detriment of the little B*******ds shooting me gangster style with their BB gats

when you introduce recoil it's just basic marksmanship principles that determine your effectiveness,

'the position and  hold must be firm enough to support the rifle etc etc' they haven't really changed and if you then apply those same principles to recoil free air rifles, .22prone rifle they still work

fundamentals count

 

[TheFull9]

Though i would have thought the weapon balance would be difference between RS and AEG making you hold it different?

I think that's getting way in to the weeds and unnecessarily so.  As I mentioned before, just when you look at ARs there are thousands of variants around with different materials used for all the different parts, different barrel lengths and profiles etc ad nauseum.  Generally a fair bit of the weight of a rifle is in the barrel, whereas it tends to be a little bit further back in the gearbox for an AEG, but on the flip side you have examples of super lightweight guns produced by companies like Battle Arms Dev that weigh as much as a G&G combat machine.  A tiny little change in balance has no bearing on the airsoft vs firearm training debate when you take in to account the huge variances in weights and balances between all sorts of different real firearms.  An M16A4 (which has a 20" barrel, huge quad pic rail etc but short aluminium receivers and plastic stock) will balance far closer to the muzzle than a Tavor (working parts way to the rear, lots of plastic construction).

Tbh I think pretty much most posts in this thread demonstrate a general lack of understanding of small arms in basically all aspects, be it construction, function, operation or anything else, let alone what it's like to shoot pistols and other weapons that are prohibited from civilian ownership in the UK.  It's no wonder it goes round in circles when you have people arguing with other people and the majority of both sides really knows extremely little about the subject at hand.  ed - not saying people should do, no need to be an airsofter, but if you don't know too much about a topic and then start debating it back and forth it is somewhat likely you'll say stuff that doesn't make too much sense realistically.

If people want to actually gain an understanding of this beyond "I reckon and my ex-army mate said so" they need to do a LOT of reading about marksmanship and weapons manipulation and the differences therein, then get a good few thousand rounds down range using the real equivalents of a lot of different common firearm types found around the world (to include different archetypes like bullpups vs standard layout rifles), with appropriate training and instruction accompanying those range sessions.  You can't go clay pigeon shooting on a stag weekend one time, play a few skirmishes then understand this topic.  Not a chance.

 

[Stratton Oakmont]

I think that's getting way in to the weed and unnecessarily so.  As I mentioned before, just when you look at ARs there are thousands of variants around with different materials used for all the different parts, different barrel lengths and profiles etc ad nauseum.  Generally a fair bit of the weight of a rifle is in the barrel, whereas it tends to be a little bit further back in the gearbox for an AEG, but on the flip side you have examples of super lightweight guns produced by companies like Battle Arms Dev that weigh as much as a G&G combat machine.  A tiny little change in balance has no bearing on the airsoft vs firearm training debate when you take in to account the huge variances in weights and balances between all sorts of different real firearms.  An M16A4 (which has a 20" barrel, huge quad pic rail etc but short aluminium receivers and plastic stock) will balance far closer to the muzzle than a Tavor (working parts way to the rear, lots of plastic construction).

Tbh I think pretty much most posts in this thread demonstrate a general lack of understanding of small arms in basically all aspects, be it construction, function, operation or anything else, let alone what it's like to shoot pistols and other weapons that are prohibited from civilian ownership in the UK.  It's no wonder it goes round in circles when you have people arguing with other people and the majority of both sides really knows extremely little about the subject at hand.

If people want to actually gain an understanding of this beyond "I reckon and my ex-army mate said so" they need to do a LOT of reading about marksmanship and weapons manipulation and the differences therein, then get a good few thousand rounds down range using the real equivalents of a lot of different common firearm types found around the world (to include different archetypes like bullpups vs standard layout rifles), with appropriate training and instruction accompanying those range sessions.  You can't go clay pigeon shooting on a stag weekend one time, play a few skirmishes then understand this topic.  Not a chance.

I do hope your referring to me

 

[Stratton Oakmont]

If so may have to change my id to dunning Kruger cos it sounds cool

 

[Rogerborg]

 

[Stratton Oakmont]

Sorry too stupid to work this one out genuinely

Sorry too stupid to work this one out genuinely

Was quite pleased with the dunning Kruger line. Ah well, wasted

 

[The Commander]

Wow, that Lucas guy is a *really* good instructor.

 

[Fosty]

Airsoft can definitely translate to real world skills.

Up until I played I never really thought about things like needing to switch shoulders for different corners, and whether or not my sling has enough slack in it to switch 

Not only that, but it can give you an idea of how tired you would get in a real engagement, how much noise you would make, how well you would actually be able to see an enemy, and how much room your weapon has when you maneuver and clear rooms.

Sure a lot of these things can be learned through drills with real firearms too, but airsoft can be more than just a game.

I plan on buying an AR15 soon and will probably get a single point sling for it now that I've got the feel of a single point sling with my airsoft M4.