by William Garrison

Bill Garrison sends us another piece, this time offering a few important pieces of advice about unsafe playing practices and unsafe fields.

The other day I was talking to a friend of mine who has just recently gotten back into playing after taking a couple of years off. He was telling me how he and some friends went to a new paintball field to play over the weekend and that in the 12 years he has been playing it was the worst experience he has ever had.  He went on to state that the field itself was awesome, but that the “regular players” at the field were a bunch of “good old boys” who tried to bully the other players on the field – firing with  full auto and hot guns.  He further stated that these same regulars would start yelling and try to start a fight if someone else did manage to eliminate one of them. This particular friend is pretty straight forward and very safety conscious and did the same thing I would do; he packed up his gear and left in disgust.

Why would a field allow a small group of players to run off new customers?

Using field rules that allow full auto during regular walk on days, as well as rules where arms and legs don’t count as eliminations: this increases the chance of an injury, while also  screwing a player out of an elimination if they hit their opponent in the arm or leg. It also generally lowers the skill level required to play the game.

Being a pump player, I feel that if I can shoot you in the toe or the hand, you should be eliminated. Likewise if I’m dumb enough to have something sticking out of my cover, I fully expect it to get shot.

Taking a full auto burst to the head on the other hand is just plain stupid. I blame the Milsim crowd for this. It’s not realistic, it’s stupid. You have an increased risk of causing severe injury to the neck area and/or knocking off a players mask simply because that’s the only thing that you are shooting at. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll take a head shot on a player, but I wouldn’t give them a burst of F/A to the head. Anyone remember the tourney event were Chris Lasoya knocked a player unconscious by shooting him twelve times in the head at point blank range? It can and has happened. (Editors note: I believe that it was five shots to the back of the head, but in this context, the number of shots is just a quibble.)

Field owners need to read up on their insurance regulations. For that matter, players need to make sure that the field that they are playing at has insurance. A field owner is setting his or her self up for serious legal trouble if a player has an injury on their field and they failed to properly insure themselves. Just because they have some generic waiver does not make them immune to a lawsuit.

The best field I have ever played at had a three shot rule. The rule was that if you broke more than three shots on another player you were out as well. The rule worked very well, the refs enforced it, and over shooting was rarely ever an issue. This same field rabidly enforced the safety rules and would send a player home in a heartbeat if they violated them. I wish all fields were like this.

As players, it is our responsibility to notify the field owner of these conditions when we encounter them. By all means, pack your gear and leave if the field conditions are unsafe, but let the field owner know WHY you are leaving. Tell them that not only will you not be back, but you will tell all of your friends and post it on all of the paintball forums why you won’t be back. If the field owner is serious, they will correct the problem and kick the trouble makers off of the field. If they aren’t serious, then most likely they won’t be around for very long anyway. Never forget that safety is number one, and no one wants to go home injured or to injure someone else.

Have fun and play safe!

(Editor’s note: in the current electronic era of readily available, nationally distributed venues coupled with easy anonymity, it is all too common to see complaints about fields or stores, teams or players that have little or nothing to do with safety concerns and everything to do with personal gripes. If you do have a legitimate concern about the safe operation of a playing site and are sufficiently moved to post something on line in an effort to encourage correction, we strongly urge you to do the following: speak personally to the field owner before taking any other action: give them a chance to make corrections – or to provide a reasonable explanation as to why they can’t. Don’t forget – YOU might be the one mistaken about the situation. If you do persist in posting on-line, be a stand-up guy and provide your real name, an accurate accounting of the situation and the reasons why you posted. In the long run, doing it that way will have much more impact than any anonymous flaming ever could.)