What can we do to help ourselves?

Henners

Henners

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Hey all,

Had a few poignant events take place recently:

-Learnt of the number of people who fly off the handle, not understanding what we do, and what an RIF is.

-Was told about the implications and dangers, to person and the community, of careless handling of RIFs.

-Had various family members (who are generally chiefs) stress out and give me a dressing down about the sport.

What can we, as players, enthusiasts, and a community do to improve our image and behaviour in the eyes of the uneducated public, and why is it (seemingly) that everyone wants to give us a hard time about our sport?

 
stop using realistic looking guns replicas.

that's it. Instantly we'd be the 'good guys' trying to have fun

 
We will never get the public around to thinking we're not psychopathic murderers in waiting. It's a fact skirmishers must live with. No amount of 'PR' will change this because gun-loathing is ingrained in the British psyche.

 
I find the above statements wrong and unfair to ourselves.

-Airsoft is outstripping paintball in terms of new players.

-More and more people are getting involved in parent-child relationships.

-We're building a reputation as a safer hobby than paintball.

-We're being seen to do lots of charity work for the more patriotic charities, which looks good.

-We've responded well to the rules laid out against us, we generally stick to them and self-police ourselves.

-Parents see us as CoD but outdoors, we get their kids off their arses and doing exercise, which is great.

-Airsoft has launched into legitimate pistol shooting competitions as the only form of pistol shooting in the UK.

-The olympic committee were considering moving all their pistol shooting over to airsoft pistols due to legal issues preventing practice is some countries.

-Four years ago, nobody knew what airsoft was when I told them it was my sport, now, people just look at me and go "that's freaking cool, you're dead lucky".

-Four years ago, I got stopped by police who used to give me a hard time for having my gear on me, now they usually ask me where they can have a go.

-The Armed Forces have recognised airsoft as a respectable pass-time, they have teams, societies and fund soldiers' playing experience, they even list it as a sport on their application forms and look favorably upon it, paintball is not on their lists.

TL:DR? Keep doing what we're doing.

I think I proved my point.

 
Panoptes said:
They do? Would like to see that. 'Sports afternoons' might take on a whole new meaning! :)
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Yep, if you apply for the RAF and in their Sports section, Airsoft is first on the list, a list in which paintball does not feature.

At my interview I was asked a LOT about airsoft, mostly whether I ever enjoyed milsim or took part in training, bushcraft stuff etc...

They said in my review that whilst I seemed to have objections to armed combat, continuing and developing my interest in airsoft would be an excellent idea if I intended to reapply, the Corporal also said that a LOT of Armourers in the forces like to tinker with airsoft guns if they have them...

Was interesting!

 
i love the way you English lot think why dont you all come over here as airsoft is the most hated sport ever example there trying to close down two of the main sites for stupid reason

this is a quote from the site owner.

"My personal opinion on the reasons in the letters is that, some of them a grossly exaggerated, some are blatant lies (i.e. claiming we use pyrotechnics late at night and operate flood lights) and others are due to just not knowing the capabilities of AEG’s and what they can and can’t do. One of those objecting even seems to think that they have the right to access private land and that we are preventing their children from playing on what is private land that they should not be on in the first place. As you can imagine this is very frustrating."

other things like we shot dogs and cats that we fire at cars on the road and the most interested is that we have nazi pride rallys

(it was a milsim and that only happened once and it was sort of my fault)

 
Hmm, that may be. As far as I'm aware the Army don't recognise it as a Sport. The government certainly doesn't.

 
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