Paintball Guns Examined

Author: Carl Walker -

A paintball gun is a device, or a replica of an actual firearm used to mark an opposing player with paint in the popular game of paintball. It uses different types of propellants such as expanding gases to propel a paintball through a barrel with a muzzle velocity of approximately 300 ft/s to break upon impact.

Firing Systems in Paintball Guns:

In the Electro-pneumatic firing system, electrical power from an onboard battery is used to drive a motor that turns gears inside the gun to compress and release a piston, which creates a blast of air that propels the paintball. These guns are capable of multiple firing modes, such as three-shot bursts, six-shot bursts or fully automatic. Most of them are capable of firing 300 to 900 rounds per minute (RPM) and their muzzle velocities range from 200 to 400 feet per second (FPS).

In mechanical or spring-powered firing system, the paintball guns are mostly single-shot or spring-cocked devices the spring has to be cocked by pulling back the slide or bolt before firing each shot. In some devices, excess air not used to propel the ball is then used to re-cock the hammer which is known as a blowback system. Mechanical paintball guns are able to fire at a rate of 200 to 275 FPS.

Gas-powered firing systems use pressurized gases like propane and HFC134a refrigerant to propel paintballs. They are also capable of using blowback mechanism, in which on-board or magazine-stored gas storage system is used to propel the paintballs and the same compressed air that propels the paintball is used to pull back the slide. So they are also capable of automatic or semi-automatic fire.

Types of paintball Guns:

There are various types of paintball guns which come in different sizes, configurations, styles and designs. Pistols are the smallest, running off of twelve gram CO2 cartridges. They have to be reloaded after ten shoots. Since pistols are less powerful with smaller paintball capacity, they are normally used for back-ups.

With pump guns, the user has to manually load the paintballs into the chamber, they cannot be automatic. They are much cheaper, very accurate and powerful in comparison to other paintball guns. Some of them come with a constant trigger so you can hold the trigger down and just pump it to shoot.

Semi-automatic paintball guns are quite expensive and may even cost you up to a $1000. They are capable of semi-automatic and automatic fire. The trigger is considerably sensitive and most models have shorter trigger pulls.

Specially configured paintball guns such as stock guns can only hold about 10 paintballs, and must be parallel to the breech, which requires tilting to load a paintball. A stock class paintball gun is powered by a single 12 gram CO2 powerlet. The knob that holds the powerlet has to be removed in order to change it. They are mostly used for stock only games. Regular pump paintball guns can also be modified to fit stock class specifications.