Paintball: Healthy Or Violent Outlet? -- Although Bullets Aren't Real, New `War' Is Now A $100-Million-A-Year Industry

DENVER - Three men wearing camouflage fatigues and carrying assault-style weapons crouch outside a dilapidated house in a junkyard in the city's industrial district.

The men nod to one another and burst into the house, guns blasting.

Two men inside return the fire. Both are hit and wince with pain.

But this isn't a SWAT team raid. It's paintball, a fast-growing action sport.

More and more people - from 10 to 60 years of age - have been playing paintball since 1981, according to an industry group.

They play the game both indoors and outdoors, taking aim at one another with carbon dioxide-powered guns that fire marble-size paint-filled balls. Upon impact, the balls explode harmlessly, leaving a palm-sized splotch of bright paint.

"It's basically a takeoff on the old game of capture the flag or tag," says Jessica Sparks, a Los Angeles attorney who is co-founder and president of the International Paintball Players Association.

"It's about people having a good time," says Marco Simcox, 36, an executive vice president with the J.C. Keepsake jewelry-store chain. "It's a different kind of sport that you can go out there and take very seriously, but laugh when it's over."

But not everyone is convinced of paintball's social value.

"I'm opposed to it because it glorifies violence and war," says Jerry Rubin, director of the Los Angeles Alliance for Survival, a grassroots peace and environmental organization.

"Paintball desensitizes kids and adults as to the real horrors of violence and war. When bullets really hit, the people who get hit don't get up. It's not right to make our children soldiers before their time."

But Sparks defends paintball as a healthy form of recreation.

"What we have found is that if you give people a healthy outlet for relieving their stress, that's a good thing to do," she says. "We see paintball as a step back from violence. It's a substitute for violence."

But that "healthy substitute" mentality is part of the problem, Rubin said.

"Why don't people question why they're having a great time?" he asks. "Why is it great fun to pretend to kill one another?"

It all began in 1981 when a paint company, which fashioned the first paint guns to mark trees and livestock as a sort of branding device, showed it off to a dozen businessmen.

One of the men, entrepreneur Bob Gurnsey, saw the potential for a profitable new form of recreation. He developed the first paintball gun, the Splatmaster, and encouraged paint companies to supply water-soluble paint.

"From those beginnings in 1981, the sport really took off," Sparks says. "Gurnsey saw the potential for an industry, and he went for it. The current estimate is that the paintball industry does $100 million a year. The same estimate three or four years ago was about half of that."

There are more than 5,000 paintball sites nationwide and an estimated 1 million people will play the game worldwide this year, Sparks says.

"I get about 25 players in on a good day and a return rate of about 52 percent," says Wayne Samuel, owner of Paintball Adventures, an outdoor facility on an old junkyard lot in Denver. The site is ideal for paintball warfare; it has houses, barns, cars and heavy equipment for cover.

Paintball also is catching on overseas. There are hundreds of established paintball fields and thousands of players in Australia, New Zealand, England, France, Canada, and several Asian and South American countries, Sparks says.

Further evidence of the sport's growth and staying power is the recent completion of Florida-based pharmaceutical manufacturer R.P. Scherer's $3 million paintball plant, Sparks says.

Most new paintball players try the sport out of curiosity. Many dedicated players say they keep coming back for the gripping adrenalin rush that can only come from a realistic life-or-death role-playing game.

"It's the most realistic way you can put yourself out there in a situation without getting into a dangerous situation," says Brad Stubbs, 39, a Lakewood, Colo., psychotherapist.

Paint guns cost $75 for a pump-action pistol or $400 for a good semi-automatic assault-style rifle. But accessories - including laser sights, 200-round magazines and improved barrels - can easily push the price to $1,000 or more.

The paintballs themselves are made of the same type of gelatin used to make vitamin E capsules. The .68-caliber balls are filled with water-soluble, nontoxic, noncaustic food coloring. Paintballs cost 5 to 9 cents each.

The balls are designed to break on impact, but at the IPPA's safe maximum speed of 300 feet per second - 205 mph - a paintball hit will leave a stinging welt on unprotected skin.

"Half the fun is seeing the guys you play with a week later and talking about their bruises and how long they lasted," Simcox says. "I enjoy that."

Players are required to wear a specially designed mask that protects the eyes, face, neck and ears. Many players add pads, coats, hats and other gear that protect most parts of the body.

As a result, statistics from the National Safety Council show paintball is safer than almost all other recreational activities. Paintball averages .31 injuries per 1,000 players per year, compared to 1.13 for golf, 3.44 for snow skiing and 27.67 for baseball.

"Once you see the game, you realize it's not people doing bayonet drills and push-ups," she says. "It's doctors and lawyers and professionals and housewives and other people who are out there to have a good time, not to promote the violence."

Rubin disagrees.

"We're not in favor of banning paintball, but we want people to be educated as to the harmful effects that it can have on them and their whole family."