The headlines could easily have read like this: 

Three High School Students Killed by Police Following Halloween Prank

As the article from the Morris NJ Daily Record paper said "officials commended Detective John R. Miscia for his restraint and discipline in not reflexively firing back at the youths.."

Detective Miscia, you are a HERO in my book, and should be thanked by paintball players everywhere for not killing idiots with paintball guns;  the resulting furor would no doubt have cast a bad light on our entire industry and could easily have brought about economic ruin – not to mention banning the game everywhere.

I am referring, of course, to an incident reported by the Daily Record, a newspaper published in northern New Jersey, where "a uniformed borough police officer…was fired at by a teen with a paintball gun".  This is the same state where Raymond Gong won a court victory that made paintball legal to play.  His entire case rested on the judge’s decision that by definition, paintball guns were NOT firearms.  The police officer’s gun IS a firearm.  How ironic.  A State where we had to fight legal battles in order to be allowed to play, and genetic rejects are shooting police officers with paintball guns.

This is just the most egregious example of numerous Halloween/Mischief Night idiocies involving paintballs and paintball guns - following a year in which there was at least one paintball-vandalism related incident reported in some newspaper some where in the country EVERY SINGLE DAY.

As the title says, this has just got to stop.  At least one newspaper report stated that police were preparing for a wave of paintball vandalism, based on credible information they had received from the community.  I sincerely hope that it was a responsible paintball business owner or player who provided the information.  They are heroes too.

Let me give you some idea of the scale of the problem. 

11/01, Local 6 News, Orlando, FL: "Several tips that teens in Orange County, Fla., are possibly stockpiling paintballs to use in attacks on trick-or-treating children prompted a warning Tuesday from Orange County sheriff's deputies.

Deputies said the tips about the possible criminal mischief on Halloween night have come from credible sources"

10/26, KESQ Newschannel 3, Palm Springs, CA "Four men are in jail tonight accused of using paintball guns to vandalize a local park."

10/14, Metro West Daily News, Framingham, MA "NATICK -- Three Natick High School students have admitted to police they are responsible for a rash of paintball-related vandalism throughout town over the past two weekends."

Three separate incidents in three different cities, in three different states, reported by three different news organizations,. And so it goes, all through the year. 

It might be going too far to suggest that the game might have been banned if the New Jersey incident had resulted in disaster, but the fact that a nationwide ban is even a remote possibility ought to be enough to wake people up to the fact that not only are paintball vandalism incidents on the rise, the press is reporting them more frequently as well. 

Neither the vandalism or the coverage are a good thing.  Folks in the paintball community would be wise to follow the example of the local community member who ratted out the pricks and do the same if they should become aware of an incident in the making.  The sooner these idiots learn that they stand a good chance of getting caught, the better it will be for the rest of us.

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