Ah, paintball guns...

To be honest, as far as being a vandal detterent, honestly, Fleix, they're not that great. They can leave a bruise up to four inches accross, if you're within 20 feet...with results falling off after that.

Paintballs don't retain their muzzle velocity well at all after being fired. They also are not balanced rounds to start with, made even more significant when you remember that they're LESS balanced when frozen. They also don't have a specific spin associated with the ball, producing somewhat random spins that tend to make the paintball act like a thrown curveball.

...They also don't freeze too terribly solid.

I think there ARE some rifled barrels on the markey (heck, mine MIGHT be!), but the paintballs don't necessarily act like bullets in the barrel...and rifled barrels also would tend to have a larger jamming factor...and oh my do paintballs jam. And by "jam," I mean one bursts within the chamber, and you have to either immediately clean it, or fire off two to three rounds, SLOWLY to fix it.

Of course, you should employ tanks rather than CO2 cartridges, but I'm sure you already knew that. You can also use normal air, if you want...the only real difference is the heating/cooling propeties of each, which may translate into more or less shots per gas cylinder, but that's a minor inconvenience if you can get the fittings for an ordinary air compressor.

All this is spoken with experience of the cheaper ($100 US) guns and ammo...I don't know if these issues fall off with money spent.

Oh, and good luck!

A 200 Dollar Tippmann, and 50 dollar barrell will mean accuracy. My main concern would be blowing the kid's eye out, and a possibly violent reaction, though granted, my money is on the war vet, rather then on the vandals.

Try this.
www.specialopspaintball.com

Happy hunting, Felix! :D

A couple of well placed Claymore's detonated at the right moment will scare the crap out of the little punks without actually causing any bodily harm.

If they are really well placed, they'll scare the hell out of the survivors. :D And since they were tresspassing, I wonder how long it would take them to call the sherriff to report it?

Over on special ops paintball, in the specialty weapons area, there was a discussion of paintball mines and grenades. Could be worth booby-trapping... ;)

LOL @ Robert... scare the hell out of the survivors... :D

rock salt is still the best way of scaring people but, a good shot wit a paintball right in the private parts will make them wish you HAD rocksalt!
my friend here can tell you all about it!
(i did it, not on purpose ;D)

1) Paintball guns are capable of 400+ fps. Usually they are set to 250 for official "safe" games.
2) typically 5, but believe it or not there are mounted gatling multi-barrel "markers" out there...
3) 10 seconds or less. You pour rounds into the hopper. The bottle is good for several reloads, typically.
4) As fast as you can pull the trigger. You can get digital triggers and expansion chambers which SIGNIFICANTLY improve response time and muzzle velocity.
5) I would put absolute max at 100 yards or so, but realistically if you hit at greater than 30 yards or so you are a terrific shot.
6) The bottle can be refilled from a larger bottle of CO2 gas and a rig you can buy for a reasonable price. Compressed air is doable, if you have a compressor.

I don't know if markers would really be a doable solution - the shotgun would be WAY more accurate at 30 yards, BUT the marker would leave nice stains on the perps clothing - especially if you can find ones with indelible dye.

Frozen balls would be counterproductive, I would think. Since you're not concerned about official rules or how much the other guy gets hurt, mod the marker to put out the highest ROF and muzzle velocity you can deliver and fit the biggest hopper you can find to it. There are backpack rigs available. :D

By the Mythbuster's episode involving the frozen chickens..I can't say that the frozen balls would have any better penetration, either, now that I think about it. they would transfer the same amount of momentum (same collision time).

And the THAWED rounds would transfer kinetic energy better, like a frangible round...and that higher KE transfer in real rounds translates to more pain/damage.

[ 02-06-2006, 06:52 PM: Message edited by: Ilander ]