What airsoft store should i go to in the uk for black and metal guns if im under 18

[Alexb111]

Paintball is stronger simply because of the weight.

If your hit by a tennis ball at 10mph it is no where near as dangerous as being hit by a car or a train at 10mph. Same thing on a smaller scale and a softer target (eye).

 

Physics guys, momentum = mass x velocity.

 

If the mass is 0.2 the velocity can get pretty high before the overall number reaches a dangerous level. If the mass is 2g then its a lot lower velocity to get a dangerous result

[Ian_Gere]

I suspect Ian is pointing only to the misinterpretation of the law, that somehow under 18's must only carry IF's. As you say the law is clear, IF or RIF you need to be 18 to buy a 'gun' these days. Long gone are nipping down the shops with pocket money to buy a spud gun like I used to do (im only in my 30's, wasnt that long ago peeps)...

Your suspicion is confirmed. And yeah, the hours whiled away folding 3 caps together and/or cutting them up with a razorblade to get more explosive force behind a miniscule triangular prism of spud fired down a round barrel

I also see the risk if we start interpreting the law more restrictive than it actually is, we will create a situation where that becomes the norm and the law catches it up or goes beyond it.

There's also the inherent danger in all bad law, which this undoubtably is, because it is not only deliberately vague in ascribing to the Secretary of State, his heirs and successors, lap dogs, lickspitals and lackies, the power to determine regulations regarding just about every aspect of the subject of the law, which then removes the content of such regulations from full parliamentary debate and, more importantly, the usual ability of the judiciary to simply ignore sections of law which are found to contravene established principles based on accumulated case law, since the law says that whatever the S of S says is the law, without ever saying what the limits of the scope of any such regulations will be; but also and worse, the law also repeatedly gives the S of S the power to be arbitrary, ie to insist that the improperly defined regulations are applied differently to different cases, without at any point defining "different" to mean anything other than simply "not the same case", thus this law creates the power for the S of S to insist that what s/he determines is ok in one case is illegal in another substantively similar case, flying in the face of not only the entire structure of British Law but also any reasonable expectation of the relationship between the citizen and the legislature...

 

[deep inhalation as grammatically this is still the same sentence lol - recap: "danger in bad law"]... that of it being simply ignored by a large number of people whenever a lack of resources prevents realistic enforcement, which then leads to harsh sentencing in a doomed effort to deter people and, by creating consequences which overshadow the actual degree of risk involved in supply, so that many people shy away, inviting habitual criminals into what must, by the simplest consequences of supply and demand, become a lucrative business.

 

If anyone doubts that this is in fact what happens, or believes that anything which gets determined to be a crime can be stopped by law enforcement, just take a look at drugs... I've seen people dicking around with airsoft guns, people whom I thought, who seemed to be and probably are, most of the time, responsible adults. Ask yourself, how much bollocks will you take before you'll think it's easier to just get a gang of mates together to challenge another gang of mates to a skirmish somewhere off the beaten track and fcuk insurance, marshalling... first aid... chrono's... the general public...?

[Ian_Gere]

Paintball is stronger simply because of the weight.

If your hit by a tennis ball at 10mph it is no where near as dangerous as being hit by a car or a train at 10mph. Same thing on a smaller scale and a softer target (eye).

 

Physics guys, momentum = mass x velocity.

 

If the mass is 0.2 the velocity can get pretty high before the overall number reaches a dangerous level. If the mass is 2g then its a lot lower velocity to get a dangerous result

Well yeah, but ballistics isn't a simple model of the theory of conservation of energy, eh? A paintball may well leave the muzzle carrying more energy than a BB, but it also loses energy to air friction much faster, since it has more surface area and that surface isn't polished.

 

Not that I'd recommend taking chances with being shot anywhere near the eye with either. I've got a dink next to my nose that I'm pretty certain is a permanent scar and it's deep enough that had it been my eye, it would have gone through the lens, definitely.

[magicaldr]

Well yeah, but ballistics isn't a simple model of the theory of conservation of energy, eh? A paintball may well leave the muzzle carrying more energy than a BB, but it also loses energy to air friction much faster, since it has more surface area and that surface isn't polished.

 

True, but from math the airsoft round never starts with enough energy to really do harm (excluding the obvious eye thing), the paintball round certainly does Mitigating are its frangible nature and as you note the fact it slows down on the way quite quickly.

 

Although as they say a paintball will go 50 metres (one of the stats I dug up in earlier quote) that sounds similar to the drop point of a lot of BB's. So not sure how much the drag on a paintball in terms of % of energy lost lines up with an airsoft pellet. A-level exam question methinks

 

All comes down to the worst case, being hit at close range.

[Ian_Gere]

I'm pretty sure that 50m range of paintballs was with the barrel elevated and, yeah a lot of AEG's would need to be elevated too to get to that range, but not as much. I mean, @50m a paintball is basically just falling.

 

You're right though, the safety of either sport has to determined by the worst likely scenario.

[Alexb111]

Yeah there are different flight characteristics and the bigger round will slow down quicker but unfortunately there is no rules accounting range into fps.

 

Since its done by muzzle velocity it requires paintball to be lower to compensate for the weight which usually means a 280fps Airsoft gun will out-range a 280fps Paintball one. However, I personally don't think it matters that much, the 3mm or whatever difference won't affect it too much as its already the optimised shape for a low speed projectile (spherical). Hop-up would do a world of good but I believe it can cause the paintballs to burst before leaving the barrel.

 

P.S. Trust me, I'm an Engineer

[ScoobySnacks]

Yeah there are different flight characteristics and the bigger round will slow down quicker but unfortunately there is no rules accounting range into fps.

 

Since its done by muzzle velocity it requires paintball to be lower to compensate for the weight which usually means a 280fps Airsoft gun will out-range a 280fps Paintball one. However, I personally don't think it matters that much, the 3mm or whatever difference won't affect it too much as its already the optimised shape for a low speed projectile (spherical). Hop-up would do a world of good but I believe it can cause the paintballs to burst before leaving the barrel.

 

P.S. Trust me, I'm an Engineer

 

Trust me, you're not a ballistician!

 

Ignore velocity, ignore mass. Saying "it fires ate 300 feet per seconds" means very little in the way of determining downrange preformance, range or accuracy.

 

Muzzle energy is the important factor.

 

Muzzle energy is measured as kinetic energy. The calculation goes along the lines of mass times velocity times velocity. (okay, actually 1/2 m.v^2 if you're being pedantic).

 

Now as to downrange performance. Anyone arguing that a bb will have more energy at 60 yards than a paintball, where the BB begins with 1 joule of energy and a paintball begins with 11, is patently talking rubbish. Actually given similar shape, the heavier item will retain energy better than the lighter one. I'm not sure on the relative densities of the two items, but the surface area to mass ratio for a large sphere is much lower than for a small sphere. The formula for calculating volume of a sphere is 4/3.Pi.r^3. So if you double the radius of the sphere you multiply the volume by eight.

 

I could spend all day talking about the aerodynamics and ballistics of spheres, but suffice to say the paintball will retain energy much better than the BB.

[Alexb111]

I don't understand your arguements you seem to be saying im wrong and then stating a completly different point to mine, Im talking about range, your taling about energy.

 

I never argued that the ENERGY will be different at range. I stated that with the same power weapon the lighter (bb) will go further than the heavier and larger (paintball) round. - Mainly due to air resistance on the larger round and the larger round starting at lower speed because it takes more energy to move a heavier object.

[Airsoft-Ed]

Bit of a necropost...

 

But, Alex, you are right. Or at least, I think you are from what I've seen.

 

If you had an airsoft gun and a paintball gun firing at the same fps, if fired on a flat trajectory and the airsoft gun had hop, the airsoft gun would massively out range the paintball gun.

 

Also, no one seems to have yet mentioned that although paintballs carry significantly more energy at the muzzle, when they actually hit their mark, they burst, essentially dissipating a tremendous level of energy away from the impact point.

 

So here's some food for thought - I tell this story a lot and people here have probably heard it before, but:

Once when I went paintballing, since you can't keep your ammo for the next time you go (well you might be able to, but for a lot of people it's pointless as paintball isn't something many people get into as they do with airsoft.) both teams stood in a line, a mere 5m apart and just unloaded into each other.

 

If you did that in airsoft, people would get seriously buggered up, to the point where I simply wouldn't agree to take part in it. But in paintball, I could stand the pain and take it fine.

So put in practice, joules and muzzle energy etc doesn't seem to matter much.

 

Up close on full auto, a 300fps airsoft gun will do a lot more damage and cause a lot more pain, than a semi-auto paintball gun of equivalent fps.

 

From my experience.

 

Though, I guess you could argue that a full auto paintball gun would be worse. But I still think that the fact paintballs burst takes a lot of the pain they would otherwise cause, away entirely.

 

All I know is that, with the limits imposed as it stands, airsoft guns can shoot further, are more accurate and look and function far more realistically. So for me, paintball might as well just not exist lol.

[rjmcgough]

Sorry If I am resurrecting this thread but I agree with Airsoft-Ed .

 

When I play paintball I get bruises.

When I play airsoft I get hits from the same range that bleed slightly or leave a scratch.

 

Probably down to the break up of the paintball on impact.

[ScoobySnacks]

Sorry Alex, but your post quoted a BB and a paintball starting at the same velocity (280fps). You say that "it requires a paintball to be lower than a bb", but a gun firing at 300 fps is firing at 300 fps (feet per second) no matter what the mass of the projectile. A heavier projectile has more energy at the same velocity.

 

The downrange energy of the paintball will be higher, due to a much higher mass (and starting fps)

 

Adding hop to the argument is just muddying the water. If a paintball and a bb are fired horizontally at the same time, without any spin applied, they will hit the ground at exactly the same time. The velocity is irrelevant. If they start at the same fps, then which will go further depends on a load of ballistic factors. Which one will have the most energy is pretty simple though. The paintball will. The energy is an important determining factor in damage caused.

 

Of course, as Ed says, a paintball bursts on impact, and much of the energy is dissipated that way rather than being transferred directly to the skin. Also the energy is concentrated on a much smaller area. So although the paintball hits harder (with more energy) less is transferred to the skin, and less tissue damage is caused.