So, on Saturday my boyfriend went paintballing with a bunch of his family for his nephews birthday. I had the oppertunity to join in or watch- I, obviously, chose to watch. During the 5 hours I watched these men play, I got to thinking…is paintball really such a good sport for young boys to play.
Think of it this way- paintball is a sport with guns where you shoot people. Ok, yes the guns are fake, they don’t shoot bullets they shoot paint, but it’s giving kids the perspection that shooting people is alright. Personally, I go back to the long lived debate about whether violent video games are alright for kids. It’s the same situation, in violent video games kids are shooting, killing, hitting, running people over, etc. In paintball, you are killing. If you get shot with a paintball, you are considered ‘dead’ or you get the oppertunity to ‘tag back’ if the option is given.
But it all comes back to the violence. Yes, paintball may be fun, from the looks of it all six of our guys that were playing had a blast. But, if a 5 year old were to see this, and then they go home and find daddys gun, and pick it up as if it were a paintball gun and try to mimic what they saw they’re brother doing… somebody could potentially get hurt.
Rascal Flatts has a song called “It’s not supposed to go like that” and the first verse is about two young boys playing cops and robbers, and one boy finds his daddys gun and plays with it, shooting his friend and killing him, all because he thought it was a game, he didn’t realize the gun was real and that it actually could hurt someone. It’s all the same thing.
The youngest in our group playing paintball was 11, and although he may be old enough to realize that a paintball gun is a paintball gun, and a real gun is a real gun… what if thee was an 8 year old there. Would he have the mental capacity to recognize such things? Maybe, but as I mentioned before, if his younger brother was watching him, his brother sure wouldn’t know any better.
I remember hearing a story about some kids who played Black Ops and decided to try it out for real. They were able to get a hold of some real guns, and hid in a tree in a covergae of a bush by the road, and shot the guns at people. Someone died that day.
This all goes back to the fact that violent games, however much fun they are, are dangerous. Parents need to be aware of what they are exposing their children to, and parents need to explain that ‘this is a real gun, this is real life’ vs ‘this is a game, this is fake’. It is up to the parents to pay attention to what their children are doing, who they talk to, and what they watch on tv.
Paintballing may be a fun sport to take up (expensive, but fun), and with the right guidence, everyone can enjoy the game without fear of something happening because one child thought their daddys gun was a toy.
Just a little food for though.
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