Here is an article in which Airsoft technology firing a light weight plastic projectile at about 300 FPS is being combined with a pellet rifle firing a heavy metal pellet at 1200+FPS. Unfortunately, many people, including those who make our laws do not understand or care that Airsoft Technology was designed specifically for shooting another person using the proper safety gear just like paintball. Pellet guns are designed for target shooting. I remember when Paintball had to fight to protect itself. This lead to terms like “markers”, “sport” and using colorful dirt bike style clothing.
We will have a much harder fight as we strive for more accurate military simulation of weapons, tactics, and gear. We will be better off learning from the history of the NRA as our fight will require a professional unified national voice to protect our rights.
-Stone Wolf
For two years now, Lisa Schwing of Children’s Medical Center of Dayton has noticed an alarming trend as summer comes to an end: a rash of kids coming into the hospital with BB gun wounds.
“In the last four weeks we’ve had seven admitted to the hospital, and that doesn’t even touch the kids who came into the emergency room, got treated and were released,” said Schwing, the hospital’s trauma program manager.
In the last two years, the hospital has seen some very serious BB gun wounds, she said. “We’ve seen BBs in the brain, in the eye socket, in the hand, in the sinuses,” Schwing said. “Last year we had one to the heart, one in the lung, one in the liver, and several in the eye — some serious injuries.”
“The big point is people think of BB guns as a toy,” she said, “and the reality is, they’re no longer toys.”
Today’s BB guns can be pumped up enough that the BB leaves the gun at more than 1,200 feet per second, she said, which is faster than a .22-caliber handgun.
Thirteen-year-old Braden Goodwin knew something was badly wrong Aug. 10 when his best friend accidentally shot him in the face with his BB gun, his mother, Katrina Goodwin said.
The friend assumed the gun was unloaded and the safety was on when he absentmindedly pulled the trigger, Goodwin said.
Unfortunately, the gun was loaded and the safety was off, she said, and her son was shot just under his right eye.
“It went through his cheekbone and shattered the cheekbone,” Goodwin said. “Then it basically went through his head and throat and lodged by his spinal cord in the back of his neck.”
She and her husband Mark had just left their house in Lima when they got a hysterical call from the friend. There was a lot of blood, she said, but the wound itself didn’t look that bad.
The family took him to St. Rita’s Medical Center, where Goodwin said the ear, nose and throat doctor took a look at the X-rays and “wouldn’t even touch it, because it was so dangerous.”
Braden ended up at Children’s Medical Center in Dayton having a three-hour operation to remove bone fragments and lead pellet fragments from his sinus cavity. Doctors had to reconstruct his cheekbone and screw in a metal plate to hold it. They couldn’t take the rest of the pellet out of the back of his neck because the proximity to the spinal cord made it too dangerous.
He’s “doing great” now, although he can’t be physically active for six weeks to allow scar tissue to form around the remaining pellet fragment next to his spinal cord. And, Goodwin said, he’ll have to live with the legacy of that small piece of metal. He’ll never be able to have an MRI, for example.
Ten-year-old Hunter Davis of South Charleston will also have to live the rest of his life with the effects of a BB gun. Hunter was shot in January with an airsoft BB gun that shoots plastic pellets, said his mother, Amber Davis.
During a “pellet gun war” with a friend, using their new Christmas presents, Hunter went into his garage and took off his goggles to reload. He had neglected to put the goggles back on when he stepped back out of the garage into an ambush.
“His little buddy got him right in the eye,” Davis said. “I mean right in the eyeball.”
Hunter didn’t need surgery, but he lost vision in the eye for two days. He recovered his vision, but he’s got a scar on his eye. “The doctor said he will not take another hit to that eye. He’ll lose his vision and his eye ,” Davis said.
