The Airsoft Community together with gun and recreational shooting enthusiasts will be gearing up again to prevent the approval of SB798 as it goes into the third hearing today. As explained before the latest amended Senate Bill would create mayhem and confusion to gun and replica firearms owners as local governments in California would be empowered to create their own ordinances to regulate or ban replica firearms owners. This would create many laws within the state that one city would allow the ownership while another would not.

And the California Paintball Safety Coalition is on the other side again, as they are for the passing of SB798 as they were to get the Bill amended to exempt paintball:

"SEC. 3. Section 53071.5 is added to the Government Code, to read:
53071.5 It is the intent of the Legislature to occupy the entire field of regulation of spot marker guns that expel a projectile larger than 16mm. No city, county, city and county, or other local government entity may enact or enforce any ordinance or resolution prohibiting or regulating the manufacture, sale, possession, or use of any spot marker gun which expels a projectile larger than 16mm.”

In their letter template to be sent to California Legislators, the Paintball Industry state that "This amendment recognizes that paintball is truly a recreational sporting activity and paintball markers are clearly distinguishable from real firearms due to the attachment of ball hoppers and air tanks to the markers." This is telling a lie as there are paintball markers designed to look like real firearms, and the industry is telling this lie with a very straight face.

Why wouldn't the Paintball Industry in California unite with the Airsoft Industry and other affected groups to block the proposed bill? This has been the point of many people, including paintball players. A united front to go against the bill would be probably better. But the Paintball Industry just went its own way to protect its own interest to the detriment of others, in particular Airsoft as it's the closest competitor. I would only speculate on a certain point: Paintball is on a decline while airsoft is on ascendancy. Sales of paintball are down, and interest in airsoft is growing where it surpassed paintball in internet searches in 2009 and is pulling away this year. This is true in the United States, and it's especially true in California as shown in Google Trends from 2009 until now:

Rather than allow consumers dictate how the competition plays out between airsoft and paintball, the Paintball Industry resorted to rent seeking, asking for government regulation for it to get an advantage over airsoft. If airsoft is taken out of the picture through government regulation, where would airsoft players go to still enjoy recreational shooting without using real firearms? Obviously, the Paintball Industry hopes it's going to be them that will benefit from an influx of orphaned airsoft players. That's a US$150 million market that it wants to get its hands on.

De Leon should have put his attention to generating more jobs and revenues for the State of California as the State really needs more money to run its day to day affairs. But this attention to regulate ior ban recreationial shooting, but giving undue preference to one group and jeopardize revenues for the State and livelihood of those who depend on airsoft is something that puzzles us.

If De Leon really wants to regulate dangerous weapons, he should start with knives on the streets, as his buddy who influenced him to amend the bill to exclude Paintball, Fabio Nuñez of the lobbying firm Mercury Public Affairs, would surely understand.

As for the Airsoft Industry and Community, they better steel their resolve even more to block the approval of the bill. Since they cannot count on the Paintball Industry for support, they have to find allies somewhere else. Good thing that they can count of many more allies than the California Paintball Safety Coalition.