10 years ago in 2014 at a time where COD (Call Of Duty) was the best its ever been, I chatting with a bunch of friends on our dinner break at work when airsoft first got mentioned. A friend suggested that we look into buying a gun and look into getting into the sport. So we started to Google airsoft guns and oh my lord did we get exited when we saw all the options! We mulled this over for a few days and spoke about how cool it would be to be able to look as bad ass as our COD characters. However, back in 2014 the wages weren't as good as they are now and we decided to give it a miss as the guns we were looking at were around £300!
Jump forward 8 years and the conversation came up again with a bunch of different friends and here we are now, 2024 and I've currently spent around £3000 on guns alone in 2 years!
My friendship circle consists of a bunch of "gamers" that all enjoy the ArmA franchise, ArmA 3 to be precise. Once we got playing that and immersed ourselves into the realism and being too scared, unfit and overweight to join the Army, we knew that the next best thing would be AIRSOFT!
So, after doing some basic research and getting all exited again about buying a gun, we soon realised this wouldn't be as easy as we thought. Of course we wanted the all singing, all dancing guns, now properly referred to as RIFs (Realistic Imitation Firearm), but we couldn't. We had to settle with a Two Tone weapon, 51% painted in a different colour that looks like a kids toy you'd buy from the dodgy Blackpool market. Knowing this would cramp our style, since we wanted to look bad ass again with gear that looks realistic, I reached out to an old friend of mine that I knew had also once thought about taking up airsoft. Luckily, he knew someone that was really into it and was selling some gear, perfect!
So we arrange a meeting at his house, and let me tell you, I was nervous and exited at the same time. I'm going to a random guys house that I've never met before to look at and possibly purchase my first RIF, what could possibly go wrong?. We knock on his door and this big dude appears and tells us to come in and head upstairs and go into the front bedroom. The curtains are drawn and its quite dark, this is seedy as hell. As we sit down on his bed, he proceeds to pull out his pistol. (No, that isn't a euphemism!). He then starts to talk us through how to use it, and tells us all about the safety aspects of how to handle it etc. He clearly knows what he's talking about and always has safety in mind, which put us at ease. It turns out, he's ex military but got injured and could no longer serve but took up airsoft because it's the next best thing. Where else can you dress up in combat gear and shoot the hell out of someone without killing them!? Anyway, he then starts to pull all sorts of rifles out that he had collected over the years and no longer wanted and even let us try them out in his back garden. We just had to get one! When we had finished shooting in his back garden and expressed our interest in buying one or two off him, he explained more about UKARA too us. Holding this permits you to purchase a RIF from a store and to get one you need to play 3 times at a UKARA registered site over a minimum of 2 months. Now, because we had a valid defence, being that we was about to go to our first game in a few weeks time that he would be able to sell us one.
But first, he said we needed to know how it felt to be shot by one! Instantly I thought we was going to get kidnapped! We are in a random guys house, sat on his bed in his seedy dark bedroom and he's loading BB's into the magazine, what is going on!? BANG! Straight to the kneecap from about a foot away! I screamed ouch and grabbed my knee, wondering if it was still attached to my leg! Shit, that hurt. But only for a second, and to be honest I didn't think it was as bad as it actually was. I think it was more the shock of what the hell just happened more than anything. We all laughed about me being a little bitch and screaming like a little girl, handed the money over and left with a Glock 18 and a Kel-Tec RDB17 rifle.
And so our airsoft journey begins.....
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