First, watch this:
So here's my bone to pick, and I've been seeing a lot of this lately: Paintball and airsoft M203 grenades pack a serious punch. Would you stare down the barrel of a loaded, charged and cocked paintball gun at point blank range? Well then why is everyone staring down their M203 grenades? There are no built in safety mechanisms in them, and if an o-ring fails his grenade could discharge spontaneously.
In the individual case looked at here, it is revealed that the grenades were charged prior to loading, so at the beginning of the video the guy loading the shell is risking his vision or worse. So while I'm kind of picking him out amongst the crowd, he acts as a good poster boy for failing to use your common sense when dealing with dangerous paintball equipment.
We all make mistakes, and I'm not outright calling this fellow an idiot, but this is certainly a boneheaded move.
Too many people see paintball equipment as toys, and fail to take the necessary safety precautions. Then something happens, someone gets hurt, and the news then reports how terrible paintball is and what horrible injuries you can get. Anyone who does not use basic common sense is giving the entire sport a bad rep. Unfortunately it always seems like we need an injury for people to realize the danger and show their equipment a little respect.
ReplyDeleteVery true, we saw this in Ottawa a few years ago when a girl waiting for a bus one night got her eye shot out by a jackass firing a paintball gun from a car. Of course legitimate fields got shat on in the media and the safety of the industry was under the microscope. (Funny thing though, that same month a guy got clobbered into a coma by someone with a shovel, but no one complained about Wal-Mart selling shovels, or cried for landscaping businesses to be better regulated). When someone gets hurt in Paintball, whether accidentally by idiots or intentionally by sadists, it casts a shadow over the entire community, whether we're guilty or not. A pretty sad state of affairs, probably a result of the public thinking we're a crazy bunch of survivalists practicing to kill in the woods.
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