I don't like guns for the same reason I don't like power tools, NASCAR, and people: the excessive noise. It's not the potential for violence and bodily harm that they represent. It's not the inflated feeling of power that they bestow upon the handler. The report from the exploding powder that propels the ammunition into a designated fleshy target is just so invasive. I can't welcome that kind of sound into my environment.
I wasn't always such a particular pussy. Right after high school I spent four years in the military – the Marine Corps even. I was responsible for unleashing lethal rounds in underprivileged spots throughout the world. And I did it with the feelings of a job well done. Four years was enough, however.I haven't held a firearm since.
Now I'm behind this log, breathing hard and fogging up my protective mask. It's hot – long sleeve shirts and thick camouflage pants are enabling some heavy sweating. My neck stings from the last game we played. There'll be an unpleasant bruise there tomorrow.
Sure, what I'm cradling to keep out of the dirt is a gun, but only partly. It doesn't carry the trait I find so unpleasant. There is a pop every time I pull the trigger and compressed air expels the paint-filled projectiles, but the volume is tolerable. It was easy to get my hands on this baby. Businesses exist with the sole purpose of renting paint gun and paint gun accessories to an unarmed public. I suppose everybody wants to leave their mark in this world – specifically on somebody else.
And I will have satisfaction over the incident that occurred at the end of our last game. The shot that nearly pierced skin on my neck was fired after the shooter was eliminated from competition. I know this because I was the one who hit him with a well-placed single shot from a concealed position. It almost seemed unfair, what with my service experience and his lack of battlefield awareness. But it would have been wrong to ease off the trigger and let him continue, ignorant of his clumsy advance. I couldn't allow him to bumble his way to safety. Not if I had any compassion.
He paid back my generosity of spirit with cowardice and betrayal. Shooting at me from behind, at close range – that was his thanks for a lesson well taught. After the game was called. After I engaged my weapon's safety and extricated myself from my superior position. After I was any kind of threat.
I am prepared to proceed with a second lesson. I shall instruct using a demonstration method. At the conclusion, he shall have a grasp on actions and their consequences. There will be no test afterwards.
Here he comes again, dittybopping along an exposed avenue of approach. I don't know if he's defiant or just not very bright. Either way, he is right in my sights. This is for the pain in my neck…
After the last of my flurry of shots, everything is so quiet.
It is a moment I'm keeping in my head as the game pauses and the shouting begins. The victim, who was my target, who was a friend, leads the chorus. He's asking, at the top of his lungs, what my problem is. A few more guys, from his team and mine, are asking the same thing. They give me little time to answer their question. My fogged mask makes it hard for me to tell which people are addressing me. The only thing I can see is the splatter color pattern that covers the man from head to toe. The greens and oranges match the thirty or so paintballs that were once loaded in my weapon.
It's relieving, actually. I guess that concentrating, even on a stationary target at close range, makes it necessary to quiet down some. All I can hear are the pops of the paintballs exiting the guns aimed at me and the splats as they strike their targets.
Sure, it's still noise. But the volume is tolerable.
