Training technique

[disgruntled]

yeah, that is probably the major difference.... i sure felt like a bad ass playing with "real" guns

[sirdarksol]

Originally Posted by disgruntled

yeah, that is probably the major difference.... i sure felt like a bad ass playing with "real" guns

That's the reason I went with the Ariakon ACP. It looks like a giant pistol, and it doesn't have a freakin' hopper. Yeah, it's limited to a 10-round clip and a little CO2 cartridge, but I don't have a big neon green gun that looks like a paint gun (as in something you'd use to paint your kitchen).
There's a company that makes pistols that have traditional-style clips. Each clip holds like 8 or 10 rounds and a CO2 cart. Not only do you get to have what looks like a real pistol, but you get to do the whole pop the clip and slap the next one in.

[disgruntled]

do you think that these type of "fake" realistic guns are comperable to the real thing? i have always wondered about incorporating them into Martial arts training...... there are places that teach MA and fire arms, but if you could use something like a paint ball gun you could do some sort of sparring with guns...

[sirdarksol]

Yes and no.
To give you an idea, the high-quality paintball guns are sometimes used as less-than-lethal gear. In particular, the one with the clips that I described above are used as LTL weapons by security people. So they've got to have pretty good accuracy and impact.

On the other hand, they'll never approach real firearms. A simple .22 round can travel a mile and still potentially maintain lethal velocity, especially if fired from a very high quality rifle. A .50 caliber fired from a high quality rifle can be accurate at over a mile. Bullets generally don't have the same kinds of flaws that paintball rounds (which are made out of a type of gelatin) can develop, so there aren't random misfires, where the bullet travels out of the barrel at a twenty-degree angle.

You definitely could use a paintball gun for a type of sparring, and even use them to teach/learn advanced firearm defense (be sure to use face protection).