Perhaps a much more civilized use of a firearm and one that is a lot less dangerous and a lot more fun are paintball guns. Paintball guns are used at designated paintball areas and are essentially firearm is filled with paint pellets; you and your team run around a paintball courts which is set up as a jungle or some other place where you can hide and you are in direct combat with another team who tries to shoot your team with their paintball guns. It's a very silly endeavor and the paintball pellets can hurt like the dickens, but to relieve stress after a hard work week or as a bachelor party special there really is nothing that brings a bunch of men closer than shooting each other with guns; paintball guns.

Originally created to two mark trees by the forest tree service in the 1950s paintballs were originally strictly utilitarian. More than 20 years later in the 1970s to friends in New Hampshire came up with the sports paintball. The first game was played in 1981 and went essentially amounted to a game of capture the flag. But in the ensuing years interest in the sport took hold and the paintball craze was born.

Paintball guns at the outset were very different from the way they are today. The first paintball guns were Nelspot pistols and used 12g CO2 cartridges. The earliest pistols held at most 10 rounds and for each shot the gun had to be recocked. The earliest paintball gun cartridges were oil base and non-water soluble.

In the early 80s paintball gun technology developed. The year-earlier paintball guns which all had to be re-cocked after every shot were abandoned in favor of newer paintball guns which had a front mounted pump.

While the earliest paintball games were played in wooded areas and secluded from other people, today there is tournament paintball all over the world.

If you are interested in finding out more about local paintball groups in your area, or just more about the sport in general, you can most certainly check out your online facilities to see what's going on in your area. A simple search engines search will usually do, and is likely to turn you up dozens of local facilities and other information. Make sure that you have all the proper protective equipment before you go out on the paintball field; remember when out with your paintball gun bring your friends and your enemies.