National Survival Game: Component Deuce An Essay on Paintball Safety
	Have you always yearned to play a game of paintball, but fear being shot by gelatin capsules traveling at 300 feet per second? Perhaps these fears would be justified, if the year was one in which the third digit was an 8 or 9. Now however, in the “naughts”, there is no need not to engage in this exceptional and extreme(ly safe) sport. In fact, there are fewer injuries in paintball, than bowling, tennis, archery, basketball, and many other sports. Paintball's superb safety record compared with other sports is attributed to the thoroughness that has been made to safety concerns from the very beginnings of the game. The sport of paintball is extremely safe due to highly technological safety equipment, rules restricting paintball speed, and the excessive use of referees.           In recent years, to help protect paintball players, the paintball industry has created modern safety equipment built to high standards. Are you afraid of getting hit in the eye with a hammer (the equivalent of being hit by a paintball at close range)? Well, thanks to today’s safety equipment, there is no reason to fear such an impact. Before the mid-nineties protective gear designed specifically for paintball was nearly non-existent. Many players wore shop goggles, ski goggles, or simply a pair or glasses or sunglasses. That kind of protection might have been okay in the Eighties, but sunglasses cannot protect you from guns capable of shooting thirteen balls per second. Now, however there are numerous companies dedicated to building paintball oriented masks, which must meet strict NPPL (National Professional Paintball League) standards. These goggles are made to withstand multiple shots of paintball travelling up to 500 feet per second from three feet away. In between games, gun safeties must be activated and barrel plugs must be installed. The safety on most guns prevents the trigger from being pulled and therefore no paintball will expel from the barrel. The barrel plugs, when properly installed in the barrel will actually prevent the paintball from reaching the end of the barrel due to the pressure causing the gelatin capsule to slowly decelerate. The adherence to these strictly enforced rules will help protect you, and add to the enjoyment of your paintball experience.              Does getting hit by a gelatin capsule traveling at 1,000 feet per second cause you to shake in your boots? If you said yes, than the sport of paintball is for you. You see, the travelling speed of paintballs is rigorously enforced at all fields. Back in the elder days, the manner in which field managers would keep excessive paintball speeds from hurting players was by shooting trees. They could tell that the gun’s velocity was too excessive if the bark of the tree broke off when struck by a paintball. This was an ineffective system, however, and many people got broken fingers as a result. However, in the early nineties the National Professional Paintball League created a regulation stating that a paintball’s velocity cannot exceed 300 feet per second. The paintball’s speed is measured by a chronograph, which accurately measures the paintball’s velocity upon exiting the barrel. Due to this highly technologic piece of equipment, it is now roughly impossible to be shot by a paintball traveling faster than 300 feet per second. Tampering with the velocity of your gun during a game of paintball is approximately equivalent to aiming the soles of your cleats toward the legs of your opponent while sliding in the second base during a game of baseball. Or perhaps it is closer to placing barbed wire around your boxing gloves in pursuit of the Heavy Weight Championship Title. In any case, increasing your gun’s velocity is illegal and is a sure way to have a referee expel you from the game.            All the rules in the known universe will not keep people safe unless the rules are thoroughly enforced. To enforce the safety (and other!) rules of paintball, numerous judges are required for every game. The judges are usually players from other teams and thoroughly keep track of every game. Although this may seem strange, it works quite well, as they are quite familiar with the rules and usually offer to perform the service free of charge. They must keep a close eye on every player to make sure that they do not cheat. Some of the most often committed violations in paintball are wiping off paint and increasing gun velocity. If a player violates the rules, it is the referee’s job to witness the violation and discipline that player, and perhaps the entire team. Without referees the sport of paintball would not be nearly as safe, and there would be much more disputing and bickering between teams.            Paintball is positively the safest sport ever in the unmitigated history of the universe. In comparison any other sport is so unsafe that I would not consider playing any of them, even if somebody would pay me one hundred million dollars. In the future, the sport of paintball can only become safer. Thanks to the use of zealous referees, the limiting of paintball speeds, and the mandatory use of safety equipment, paintball has become the safest sport of the twenty-first century. With over 7 million people who play paintball regularly the sport has become the fourth largest extreme sport, and it is also the safest. Now that there have been such tremendous leaps in the safety of paintball, insurance companies consider paintball safer than bowling, but paintball is a much greater game than bowling.