Paintball Sport: PAINTful or PAINful?

It's been quite sometime since the last time I rant about paintball and safety, that at certain times, I got the feeling that back then my followers/readers (if I still have any today) got bored...in fact, I myself got sick of repeating the same thing over and over again.

"MASK ON!"
"BARREL SOCKS ON!"

But then again...it is our duty to remind everyone about these when they violated the safety rules, so that innocent people are not hurt, to protect the ignorants in the field as well so that they still can have both eyes intact and play paintball, and hopefully changed into someone who cares the sport as much as we do.

Lately, what bothers me is that there had been reports, stories that some players purposely set their markers exceeding the safety limit.

Note: we have this radar chronograph that can detect how many feet per second that a paintball travels and how many balls per second it can shoot.  In any tournaments, it should be no more than 300 feet.  In normal playing fields, the operators normally set their markers to 260-280 feet per second (307km/h) the most.  

So why do we need to keep an eye on this as well, you might ask?  If you seen me personally, you'll notice the bruises I had on my legs, arms, neck and sometimes if you got lucky, you might spot a lump on my forehead.  That's the result of getting hit by paintballs that travels below 300 feet per second (about 329km/h).  So imagine if you got hit something more than that, say, 350 feet per second at a very close range, maybe 1-2 meters away from you?

Perhaps, the shooter didn't realised this, maybe because they got to sit behind a bunker, possibly meters away from the opponent and all they knew is saw the unsuspected poor player passed by, pull the trigger and showered paintballs on them, feeling proud of able to hit them and the poor victim unable to shoot back.  So what gives?  Pride?  Happy?  Honor to injure someone?

Think about a more serious thing that might happened...what if it hits the mask and it breaks?  Can you live with the consequences that you might blinded someone because of your 'I don't care', selfish, arrogant attitude?

The next time you think of doing that, put yourself into the shoes of your opponent, that you are the person who got hit by such powerful, painful impact of not one, not two but at least 30 balls shooting at you per second with 400 feet per second and see if you can stand the pain, when it hits you.  

Paintball is supposed to be a sport that values positive sportsmanship.  It unites people from all walks of life.  

If the purpose of playing paintball for you is just to cause injury, pain to others and you are proud of it, I would honestly said that you have no place in the community for people who worked hard to keep this sport grow.  

If you lose the game, lose with honor.  If you win, make sure that you truly deserve that win.  But winning through all means of injure someone for your own pleasure, breaking the safety rules as such - there is no pride in such win because you got someone's pain in your hands.  

Make this sport PAINful or PAINTful?  
You decide today.

For the love of the sport, you will know what to do.  Act now, do your part as a paintball player.  Not just the operators, organizers, referees.  The responsibility lies in everyone's hands.