Airsoft
Initial Draft: January 26, 2025
From as little as when I was five or six, I loved guns and gun-shaped things. I started off with foam dart guns, I had a Nerf Radier and Longshot with which I'd get into little wars with my brothers. After two or so years of that, my dad taught me how to shoot real guns with a .22LR rifle and a 20ga shotgun. I loved the real guns for being what they were, big chunks of metal and wood that looked somewhat like things I saw in the video games I played. If only I could have versions of them like my nerf guns, things that were pretty darn safe to shoot at others with nothing but safety glasses...
In 2008 or so, I found this website called Kapowwee. They sold some pretty real-looking foam dart guns and then also these things called "Airsoft Guns". Their description of what the things were went as-follows: What Is "Airsoft" ? The sport is similar to paintball; however, the scenarios are a more realistic battle theme. Airsoft guns shoot 6mm plastic BBs at a velocity ranging from 100-300 feet per second (fps). In comparison, a paintball marker also shoots 300fps but a real metal BB airgun gun shoots 650+ fps (which we do not sell). Airsoft do not penetrate skin, but they could cause harm to the face and eyes, same as in paintball or many other sporting activities. Eye protection is a minimum and must be worn at all times.
Realistc-looking replica guns that shoot a whole lot faster than nerf guns and also just need safety glasses? I was sold on the idea. I got my brothers in on it and we all asked for airsoft guns. Not a few months later and my little dream came true, my dad gave me one of the "TSD" springer M14s alongside a paintball mask, a thousand 0.12g BBs, and some little metal targets. I would play around with that thing every day, taking it in the basement just plinking at targets and thinking it was the coolest thing ever.
Eventually, from looking up info about the real expensive "Premium Grade" airsoft guns on Kapowwee, I learned about a few things: There were shops like AirsoftGI and Redwolf that sold fancier guns with cool video "reviews" (they were totally ads but they were awesome to kid me), there were these really cool games at fields which people like scoutthedoggie sometimes recorded and put on youtube, there was a local field at the indoor flea market by the mall, and I "needed" a better gun so I could engage in all of that stuff.
A year later and I was "kitted out" with a KTW SPAS 12 alongside three extra magazines, two speedloaders, a sling, a flashlight, an Empire paintball mask, and a hoodie. If I could I'd go to that indoor field and play all damn day. Two years later I had a Tokyo Marui MP5SD, a Condor battle belt with pouches, some Thunder-Bs, goggles and a half mask, and kneepads. Five years later a family vacation was lined up with OLC XII and I played my first big event.
These days I don't play a ton of airsoft. That said, when I do, I make it count. You can find me with buddies going to any field within three hours of us, from River City in Hamlin NY to the Amped Arena in Pittsburgh PA or Odin's Paradise in Norwalk OH. I show up to events put on by Gun Gamers Productions, a promoter that puts on amazing 12-hour and 24-hour events featuring two fake countries and a whole lot of great LARPing. Maybe I'll make it out to a MSW again soon? Who knows.
My collection of replicas ain't what it used to be, that said it's still fairly sizable. As I write this, the weekend before GGP's "Snowblind", I'm putting most of my focus into an old LCT RPK74M - it was a 1J build made to take "advantage" of a TK Twist barrel I had laying about to create an indoor-legal "DMR", nowadays it's a 1.2J fairly stock setup that I'm using as a generic IAR. As I update this, two days after Snowblind, I'm here to say it ran well! It just wasn't in my hands, friend of the site Katsup used it and had zero issues despite most people at the event having guns go down. Ain't that cool?
