Or so the Australian Government would have you believe. Upon classifying
paintball markers (aka paintball guns) and associated accessories as restricted
weapons and articles, possessing paintballs outside of licensed premises has
become illegal.
I have performed some experiments myself to determine the actual lethality
of these 68 caliber precision manufactured spheres of bitter non-toxic gelatin.
The tests involved simulating various situations involving paintballs. They
included:
- Eating a paintball
- Firing a paintball at 10x the speed of sound at a live target
- Firing a paintball at 10.1x the speed of sound at a live target
An innocent bystander or unwilling participant is useful for tests 2 and
3. It may be harder to convince a subject to voluntarily partake in test 1.
The first test was not completed due to the repeated knee-jerk reaction of
spitting out things that taste unbelievably foul. It is however observed that
I'm still not dead. Yet.
The results from further tests are:
A paintball traveling at 10x the speed of sound will penetrate human flesh
and cause extreme bodily damage, which most likely leads to great blood loss
and subsequent death.
A paintball traveling at 10.1x the speed of sound has a similar effect.
Modeling this experiment produces the equations l = 10nx and l = 10nx + k, where
l is the estimated lethality, n is the fudge variable, x is the speed of sound and
k is a small incremental value. From that, we can deduce that paintballs are lethal
at and above a velocity 10x the speed of sound by using mathematical induction
Similarly, rearranging the equation and order of experiments, it can be shown
the reverse, l = 10nx and l = 10nx - k, also holds true. Therefore, paintballs
are lethal at all velocities at, above and below that of 10 times the speed of
sound.
Eating paintballs has not yet proven to be dangerous except to one's tastebuds.
These conclusions lead me to believe that the Australian Government is Doing
the Right Thing by not allowing members of the general public to shoot each
other with these potentially lethal objects outside of licensed and supervised
premises. Similar experiments also have shown that Guns don't kill people,
camouflage overalls kill people and Guns don't kill people, T-shirt slogans
kill people.
Readers are warned not to attempt these experiments without supervision by
ballistics experts or their parents if they're under 18. Recommended reading
includes the "Guns don't Kill People metanode" journal.
This write-up is 99% Fact Free!