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:

  1. Eating a paintball
  2. Firing a paintball at 10x the speed of sound at a live target
  3. 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!

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