Can you be Anti-Gun and Pro-Airsoft?

It seems like a contradiction, support of firearms naturally means support of replica firearms and vice-versa right?

Maybe not.

While designed to replicate firearms in the extreme, airsoft guns are radically different from the conventional firearms they are made to replicate. Each year, airsoft manufactures strive to make airsoft guns as realistic as possible to the firearm they mimic without ever having the intent of duplicating the firearm.

Airsofters want all the action, function, recoil, sound, and appearance of the firearm without it's key purpose: destruction.

Believe it or not, they do not want that destructive power, because then they couldn't use it for airsoft games. There in lies the key distinction between the two, no matter what DVD is released recommending them as training tools, what company changes their products from airsoft to training devices, or what some politician elected on a water reform platform might lead you to believe.

So, with this distinction can you be anti-gun or pro gun control and pro airsoft? I believe that you can.

If you separate airsoft and firearms based on function, destruction of whatever is in front of you vs. key component of a game, the distinction is obvious.

Even if airsoft guns are used as analogues to firearms, they are fundamentally different. While airsoft guns are used as cosmetic substitutes for firearms, they are never meant to protect, deter, or kill the way firearms do.

In terms of the gun debate and the airsoft debate there are essentially 4 potential positions:

Pro Gun, Pro Airsoft

The individual is both pro gun and pro airsoft. More than likely, they support the ownership and use of firearms for self defense or recreational purposes, and any training devices or analogies for firearms. The individual believes they have a right to firearms and that airsoft is an extension of that same right.

Pro Gun Anti Airsoft

An individual can easily support firearm ownership and fight airsoft. Airsoft guns are viewed as toys, with no regard to firearm safety or etiquette, giving real firearms a bad image and developing dangerous bad habits. Firearms are not toys and should be given the respect they deserve due to their lethality.

Anti Gun Pro Airsoft

Would make a great blog post, this individual would see airsoft as part of a game, a toy, and firearms as a inherently destructive device that is only meant to kill. Airsoft is not dangerous but firearms are and should be removed for public safety.

Anti Gun Anti Airsoft

Here the individual believes firearms and anything similar is dangerous. Firearms are meant to kill and while airsoft does not, they are similar enough to be abused or lead to dangerous situations. Even if firearms were eliminated from the general public, they can exist on the street. And if they do, then airsoft guns can be mistaken for them.

The pro-gun anti-gun debate still rages on, and has picked up airsoft due to the fundamental nature of airsoft design. Opinions vary along a wide spectrum of stances, this post attempts to illustrate that rather than take sides.

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.

The beginning

Hello there and welcome to Average Airsofter.

This is my first post in a blog that was created to help the airsoft community. Because it needs help, a lot of help, and that's what AA is for (PUN!).

Is it the parents that buy devices requiring an 18+ purchase and then let their 9 year old's shoot each other in the street with it? Perhaps the airsoft media that perpetuates every Chinese, plastic geared, clone is a unique flower that performs perfectly, needs to be put in check? That players are putting themselves in lethal danger by incorrectly transporting the airsoft gear? Is it that some gear whore didn't call their hit?

No. And yes. And maybe sometimes.

It is my intent to promote airsoft and safe guard a sport that teaches good values, by shooting each other with tiny plastic pellets. I want to leave airsoft better than I found it.

I'm not trying to sell you something. (At least not yet, but shirts may be cool)

But I am trying to sell you on making airsoft better.