Overview of Hobby Airsoft
The hobby of airsoft guns has been around the Far East, the United Kingdom, and the United States long enough to allow manufacturers to develop a large and varied list of product. A casual visitor to one of the many Us suppliers’ website would be surprised by the large number of pistols rifles, and even shotguns marketed at the Airsoft aficionado.
Many of these airsoft pistols sit at the high end of the price spectrum, with users paying as much as $150 for a top of the line pistol. On the low end, the spring-propelled pistols can be purchased for $20-$30 and make good entry-level weapons for those not sure if they wish to engage in the hobby. The pistols are remarkable 1:1 imitations of real semi-automatic pistols and revolvers and if one ignores the orange tip, can be indistinguishable from their non-lethal versions when placed side by side.
They fire a polystyrene plastic pellet of various weights and sizes, but the most common and closest to a “standard” in the airsoft business is the 6mm (.23”), .20 gram plastic BB. The guns available can be broadly separated in to three categories ; the simple, and cheaper, spring pistols, the gas or carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) powered blowback pistols, and the automatic electric guns, or AEGs.
The airsoft guns originated in Japan where, in almost three decades, enthusiasts of the hobby have taken the hobby to a new level of sophistication and realism. The hobby was born out of necessity; Japan, like so many other countries, has strict laws regulating the possession and use of real firearms. As a result of these restrictions, weapons aficionados develop an alternate shooting system built on platforms that resemble real weapons, on a 1: 1 scale, firing projectiles propelled by gas, springs and electric motors.