: What?  Ho can you say that?  This damn canadian is talking bout how airsoft : requires MORE skill?  WHAT?  In paintball guns may be capable of fast rate : of fire, but hey, almost ALL airsoft guns are FULLY AUTOMATIC!   Ya - that's us - the Damn Canadians =^-^= Anyway, Airsoft does require more skill in the sense that you can't just run from tree to tree, as the guns in Airsoft are almost all full-auto. If you tried this, you'd probably get shot pretty quickly. This forces the p_layer_ to concentrate more on tactics than to rely on pure aggression. The gunner may require less skill, as yes, it's much harder to hit a moving target with a semi-auto paintball gun than it would be with a full auto airsoft gun. Of course, if you're playing paintball, it's probably because you enjoy the situation that you are put in (hunter/hunted) - so wouldn't you want the higher level of realism? I love my paintball gun, and I'll miss her when I sell her to buy an airsoft MP5SD5 and eventually, a PSG-1 Sniper Rifle. But the reason I'm doing it is because I love to play mil sims, and airsoft simply has more to offer in the way of look, feel, and maintenance costs. (Guns are electric, BBs cost less that paintballs). Anyway - that's just my opinion I suppose =^-^= Later Meg

What  is Airsoft?  Is it a brand of gun? A whole different technology from paintball. The term airsoft generically means it fires 6mm plastic BBs which are lighter than the 4.5mm steel bb's used by conventional BBguns.  For the most part, airsofts are highly accurate replicas of live firearms, manufactured with varying amounts of _meta_l and plastic.  Most (not all) people agree that the best ones come from the Japanese company Marui from Tokyo - this is often misspelled as Mauri - it's the same company.  There are other companies out there, good and bad. First there were spring guns which are like paintball pump guns.  These are still popular due to price - you can get them for as little as ~$35 in the US for some handguns, up to $250ish for a SPAS12 that fires 3 bbs at a time.   (Cheaper in some other places).  Spring power is available in everything from baby glocks to HK.  You can get more guns in spring than gas or electric due to the simple mechanism - everything from baby glock 26's up to M16s are available. The mid-late 80s brought freon/flon/ green gas powered guns and introduced fully automatic airsoft guns.  The guns run wider range than springers, well into the hundreds of $.  They make some handguns, revolvers and rifles.  KSC has a very cool HK SOCOM out now. The latest development is the AEG - Airsoft Electric Gun.  These are an interesting tradeoff - the guns _typically_ run $400 and up in the US, but they run on rechargable nicad batteries commonly used by radio controlled cars.  These guns typically shoot over 10 bbs per second at approximately 280-300 fps.  However, once you've got the gun, you typically spend about $20 for 3500 rounds of ammo, and instead of 10-20 bucks on CO2/air fills you can run those 3500 rounds for (comparatively) a few pennies worth of electricity.   Some models of the guns can only fit smaller batteries in - 600-700mah capacity, which provides 600-1000 shots depending on your trigger finger.   Some models will literally take 7cell RC car packs with capacities of 1200-2000 mah...and a 2000mah pack should give 3000 rounds pretty easily. There are also small, cheap mini-electrics which are cartoonishly proportioned and _style_d to resemble M16s, AUGs, MP5s, etc.  These have a fire rate of about 5/second and about 140 feet/second velocity, using lighter weight pellets. Accuracy on all airsofts is impressive - stock AEGs compare favoribly with heavily modified paintball gear, especially in low wind.