An Overview Of Airsoft Guns

By Anthony Carter

Airsoft guns are replica weapons that are usually highly detailed. They are built for recreational purposes. The games they are involved in entail the opposing players attempting to shoot at each other as one would in a paintball match. Airsoft guns fire pellets, not real bullets, which can travel as fast as 260 mps.

These pellets are usually propelled by some kind of compressed gas or perhaps a spring based piston. An electric piston may also be used. The guns can be fired manually or by an electric motor or by compressed gas, which is usually propane, green gas or Co2.

Airsoft guns are designed for people aged sixteen and over. With proper care they can be perfectly safe, although some safety concerns have arisen because of the airsoft guns. The pellets are almost always non-metallic and usually travel at to low a velocity to actually penetrate the skin. However, although metal pellets are banned on all Airsoft sites, they are still available from specialist stores. Some players even manufacture their own metal pellets.

A plastic or rubber pellet could, in theory, pierce the skin at close range. A gun would have to be upgraded to shoot faster than 150 mps. There are one or two sites that will suggest that guns set up in this way must not be used to play with. There has also been much concern over airsoft guns being used by criminal gangs.

During the 1990s there was a brief spate of robberies that involved the criminals using fake or replica guns in place of actual guns. The fakes were a lot easier to buy than real weapons, but could still be used to intimidate victims. To counter this, the American government has made it illegal to buy or sell airsoft guns that do not have an orange tip at the end of the barrel.

1970s Japan is the unlikely origin of the airsoft gun. Back then it was against the law to own a real gun, and so there was a great demand for replica weaponry. One or two companies began to manufacture a realistic looking gun that had a spring loaded firing system. Many different sizes of bullet were used in the original run of these replicas. However, the projectiles were eventually standardized at 6 and 8 mm caliber. The gas powered guns followed in the late 1980s.

The hobby became popular in America in the mid 1990s. The early Japanese guns would become known as classic airsoft. Ten years later a new generation of guns arrived, the automatic electric guns designed by Tokyo Marui Co. Ltd. The release of these guns coincided with a recession in Japan. Many Japanese manufacturers folded and eventually the only main producer was the inventor of the automatic electric gun.

Marui then worked to improve the accuracy and range of these guns. It developed an advanced Hop up system, which forms the basis of the modern gun. At the beginning of the 2000s a new company came to challenge Marui's dominance. Classic Army of Hong Kong began to introduce more and more accurate guns to the market. Since then dozens of Chinese brands have flooded the market with more basic entry level guns. - 31373

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