Saturday, January 23, 2010

Milsim Idiot

With any paintball marker, especially one that could be mistaken for a real firearm, it is the duty of the operator to exercise caution in how they display and use it.

The reason for this is twofold:
1. It protects the user and anyone that may be with him from the actions of responsible and diligent law enforcement personnel.
2. It protects the image of paintball (especially milsim paintball) in the eyes of the public and in the eyes of law enforcement personnel.

In the video below, a Canadian milsim paintballer fails to protect himself, and finds himself in a scary situation.



Here are the things that this irresponsible individual did wrong in this situation:

1. He is either on crown or public land with a paintball marker (and a milsim one at that).
2. He is alone.
3. He is making obvious efforts to conceal himself while in milsim gear.
4. He states, "Wait, it's a paintball gun!". While it's necessary to always refer to it as a paintball marker, in the heat of the situation, one of the officers involved may have only heard, "... It's a ... gun!".
5. He jumps out of the bushes when he sees the officers surrounding him, with his paintball marker still on his person.
6. He states, "I'm part of CSPO, Tactical Paintball Operations". By affiliating himself with CSPO (which was in no way associated with what was going on), he slanders the responsible organization by his irresponsible actions.
7. Despite the suggestion of the RCMP officer, he posts the video on Youtube, further straining relations between himself (and possibly the milsim community) and law enforcement personnel.

The RCMP officers in this video responded to the situation exactly how they should have, and I congratulate them on how they dealt with everything that was thrown at them. Hopefully this video will serve as the perfect "what not to do" example for new paintballers, and not as a posterboy for the vilification of milsim paintball.

10 comments:

  1. true, he should have put the gun ahemm... excues me the marker and the pack down while he was in the trees. then took off his mask and preferably as much ghillie as possible. if the officer could see the mag and obviously more of his marker that means that he didn't have enouf ghillie on it! also that just cracked me up when he said no sir I won't post this on youtube... that is disrespectful and just asking for trouble.

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  2. Wow, that kid is a class A bone-head! That's exactly why I've made sure that my neighbours on both sides know what my X7 looks like and that it's a paintball marker; and keep it in a locked bag from my house to the field!

    As for his interactions with the RCMP, I saw three major flaws:
    - The first was referring to it as a paintball GUN as pointed out... not a good start.
    - Second, saying he's with CSPO; Tactical Paintball Operations doesn't help his cause on two fronts; partailly because he's helping to discredit the CSPO, but also the officer could have just heard 'Tactical Operations' making this guy out to be a paramilitary nut; and it sounds like he's got more people in ghillie hidden in the woods. He even continued it when in the circle with the cops, trying to promote the CSPO... Sad really...
    - Finally he must have said 'paintball' about 46 times; and that doesn't help any of the rest of us! The officers already know it's not a real firearm, stop digging the hole for all paintballers!

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  3. I don't think his stuff should've been confiscated, because like the police officer's said, what he was doing wasn't technically illegal.
    Though, he was on what appears to be a public (rural, but still public) road! What a nut!
    And it seems like he was already on the chase and set up the camera just in time for the RCMP officers to find him. :\ Was he trying to test out his ghillie suit of the officers? What a fucking idiot!

    Yelling "gun" in any context is really not a good idea.

    I play on crown property, but the places we play on are far from public roads and houses and generally anything where people are going to be, and are fairly heavy wooded areas.
    We also don't go alone, so that it's OBVIOUS that we're just playing paintball.

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  4. Can't see the vid .. anybody got the url for it? I need to show my son who is an idiot in the making ...

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  5. @Anonymous The URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4ZQH724wuw&feature=player_embedded

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  6. I think the jackass was setting up the cops for his video. At 26 seconds in, you can gear the sirens approaching. Kind of convienent if you ask me that they're approaching so soon after he gets his camera set.

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  7. Cool, thanks man. Hopefully there will be one less idiot in the world soon.

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  8. I am the founder of CSPO. I am very glad that it is immediately apparent that this guy is not acting on behalf of, or in any capacity of what our organization is about.

    Whenever we conduct outlaw operations, they arent really out-"law", since we always notify the local police detachment SSGT a minimum of 7 days prior with a faxed notice addressed directly to them, along with a map of our area and description of what we are doing, just in case any civvies see us, freak out, and call the cops.

    In short, so that crap like this doesnt happen. This guy was dishonorably discharged from the CSPO for other reasons, but this video just villifies that he was not an acceptable representative of our group.

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  9. This person's actions is one of the many reasons our sport continue to get stabbed at by the media. This doesn't just affect the person, it affects us all that play the sport. The RCMP officers handled the situation correctly in all aspects of the situation and I'm glad they did.

    Rev Bruce pointed out the important lessons about this situation and we should all learn from it. I, myself, am quite annoyed to see this kind of stupidity. There is no need for it. There is no reason to even go that far. Always think safety whenever playing the sport. It saves everyone the grief in the end.

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  10. Heh, I posted on the milsig forums awhile back, it was brought up and linked to me by a friend, I thought it would be a valuable educational tool for all to see, though the friend suggested I not share it so as not to get "deepcover" in trouble (I suppose I'm as dishonest ase?), I hope it stays up for all to see.

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