Airsoft Vs. Realism

(Warning, impending quasi-rant incoming!)

It's why we play the game, it has decided manufacture's product strategies, forced teenagers to give up their allowances and is one of the defining and least realistic aspects of airsoft: it's realism.

But the harsh truth is that airsoft is no where near as close as you can get to the real thing.

Playing airsoft is not going to train you to perform in a military, police, or revolutionary engagement. Our favorite pastime is does not even come close the preparation needed to even survive in those situations, but it does help.

Airsoft teaches players some very important skills that can be applied to real combat. Through the use of pain:

• Stay behind cover, or you will be shot.
• Be aware of your surroundings, or you will be shot.
• Move quick and stay quiet, or you will be shot.
• Keep your head down, or you will be shot.
• Watch out for flanking, or you will be shot in the back.
• Know your gear, and how to reload fast, or you will be shot.
• Look first, walk out from behind cover second, or you will be shot. 
• Stay behind something solid, or you will be shot.
• And most importantly, you are probably going to get shot.

You will learn, and you will learn fast. Because airsoft is a sadistic mistress that teaches you with welts, scrapes, and dislocated elbows (A story for another time). But you will learn in a context that is far removed from the real thing. 

War is traumatic, where two groups fight to see which loses the least.

To put aside the philosophical, there are a number of physical differences:

• Your 8 lb airsoft gun is roughly the same wait, but those airsoft magazines turn from ounces to pounds.
• Bullets travel in long curves, not as if they were piloted by deranged wombats that are off their medication.
• 300 feet is close range, 1000 feet is normal.
• Bullets go through bushes.
• Your plate carrier is used to hold giant steel plates.

So if airsoft is so different from the real thing, why does everyone say it is so similar?

They want you to buy something.

Ok, ok, they want you to buy something and they know you want to hear that. Teenagers through middle-aged men with too much money are adventurous. We want to associate ourselves with warriors, with movies like "The Last Stand", "Black Hawk Down", and "Battlefield Los Angeles". They're cool, its fun, we admire them and we want to be like them without the risk. So we play soldier, until the phase passes or we sign up.

Cultures have done it since the beginning of our species. The fighting age youth smack each other with sticks until they are ready for swords. It's in our nature, and that's ok. Retailers, manufactures, event coordinators and anyone trying to make money in airsoft knows that you crave the real thing. So they slap high realism on everything and do what they can to fulfill your need with cheap clones, lead weights, and black paint. 

There's nothing wrong with wanting airsoft to be realistic, or striving to complete your kit fantasy. Just remember this is a fantasy game, cops and robbers with more rules, and things that shoot.