kenshinkandon
03-11-2002, 01:54 PM
No this is not just another repeat to the Sticky posted earlier. Being in college I have access to several databases online and occasionally search around on different topics and today I decided to lookup paintball and I came up with this New York Times Artical For March 11 and thought that you all would like to read it. If anyone wants to know where I got it from it's from a databse called lexis nexis I think you have to pay to access the site But I do not because of my college account. If I find anymore articals that are of interest I will post them here.
Here it is
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 11, 2002, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section B; Page 6; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk
LENGTH: 841 words
HEADLINE: Milford Journal;
Drop the Gun (or Whatever): Paintball Is Banned
BYLINE: By PAUL ZIELBAUER
DATELINE: MILFORD, Conn., March 8
BODY:
This city, like many other cities and towns in Connecticut, likes to keep things nice and quiet. Respectful. Decent. No surprises, no problems. I'm O.K., you're O.K.
Which is why paintball, the war game in which players armed with Terminator-like guns blast one another with gumball-size pellets filled with fluorescent goo, is not exactly what the Board of Aldermen here considered good, clean fun. Or good P.R. Last Monday, reacting to a handful of complaints from residents, the board voted 14-1 to ban paintball games on city property, effectively putting the sport out of business locally and putting Milford on the front line of paintball legislation nationwide.
The city attorney, Marilyn Lipton, said she believed Milford was the first municipality in the country to ban the sport on public land. For paintball players around the state, it just figures.
"In terms of paintball, Connecticut is the worst place in the world," said David Lewis, who works at Eastern Paintball, a store in Branford dedicated to paintball accessories.
His is not a wayward opinion; for people fond of paintball -- a kind of capture-the-flag team game played in the woods, mostly by boys or men in Army-surplus camouflage and protective masks who shoot bursting pellets at 280 feet per second -- playing in densely populated western Connecticut is like crossing Interstate 95 on foot. Not entirely popular.
Mayor James L. Richetelli Jr., a Republican who supports the board's vote, said paintball was fun -- he even played years ago, before he married -- but incompatible with Milford's park system. In 28-acre Eisenhower Park, he said, pedestrians on hiking trails have encountered paintball players shooting or being shot from somewhere in the woods.
Other residents have called the police to report "people in the park with guns," he said.
"It's just not a good mix," Mayor Richetelli said. Especially given the terrorist attacks last year, he added, "In this day and age, reports of people in the woods with guns is just not a good idea."
Joe Mulvihill Jr., the co-owner of Splatter Zone, a family-run paintball store in Milford, said city officials were overreacting.
"It's going to hurt business," he said today. "People are not going to let their kids play as much." Besides, he said, Eisenhower Park has plenty of secluded woods. The "weapons," made of colorful aluminum stocks and fitted with a tank of pressurized gas, don't look anything like real guns. Paintball, invented in New Hampshire 20 years ago by timber company workers marking trees, is a perfectly safe and fun game, he said, if a tad intense.
What's more, contrary to what Ms. Lipton, the city attorney, has said publicly, paintball pellets are made of biodegradable vegetable oil, not lead, latex or anything else environmentally unfriendly.
Alderman Nick Veccharelli Jr., one of five Democrats on Milford's 15-member board and the only one to vote against the paintball ban, said he was "ashamed" that his city is now known as the first in America to ban the sport.
"Sometimes I wonder why we have to come up with all these laws that regulate our citizens," he said. "Anything that's fun gets a big circle with line through it."
On the same night as the vote to ban paintball, the board narrowly defeated a proposal to ban the use of all-terrain vehicles on city property. In February, the aldermen also voted to restrict wet-jets -- personal watercraft -- from exceeding six miles per hour on Milford's Gulf Pond.
And about 10 years ago, the board imposed a curfew on Gulf Beach after 10 p.m. -- to get rid of young troublemakers, Mr. Veccharelli said, and never fulfilled its promise to consider rescinding the ban once the beach was safe again.
"It was a nice place to pull off the road to watch the water," he said. "Why did we have to lose that?
"We still live in what I'd like to believe is a small-town community," he went on. "And it seems like we're on a fast pace to urbanize our way of thinking, where you can't do anything at all."
Instead of banning paintball, Mr. Veccharelli said, a more reasonable approach would have required paintball players to wear bright uniforms, use fluorescent orange guns that don't look threatening, and post little metal signs, like those that janitors use to keep people off wet floors, along the perimeter of paintball games to avoid startling the public.
Mr. Mulvihill of Splatter Zone said Milford was home to 200 to 300 dedicated paintball players, ranging in age from 10 to 60. Gearing up to play is not cheap. The guns at Splatter Zone (which aren't called guns, but markers, because "we're trying to be more politically correct," one employee said) range from $200 to $1,000, not including the paintball hopper that feeds the gun or the nitrogen tanks that power it.
Appearances aside, paintball fans say, it is all quite harmless.
"Years ago, kids used to go out with pellet guns and shoot wild animals," Mr. Veccharelli said. "How devastating was that?"
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photo: Joe Mulvihill Jr., a co-owner of a paintball store in Milford, Conn., with a marker (some would say gun) used in the game. Another store owner has called Connecticut "the worst place in the world" for paintball. (Richard L. Harbus for The New York Times)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2002
Here it is
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
The New York Times
March 11, 2002, Monday, Late Edition - Final
SECTION: Section B; Page 6; Column 1; Metropolitan Desk
LENGTH: 841 words
HEADLINE: Milford Journal;
Drop the Gun (or Whatever): Paintball Is Banned
BYLINE: By PAUL ZIELBAUER
DATELINE: MILFORD, Conn., March 8
BODY:
This city, like many other cities and towns in Connecticut, likes to keep things nice and quiet. Respectful. Decent. No surprises, no problems. I'm O.K., you're O.K.
Which is why paintball, the war game in which players armed with Terminator-like guns blast one another with gumball-size pellets filled with fluorescent goo, is not exactly what the Board of Aldermen here considered good, clean fun. Or good P.R. Last Monday, reacting to a handful of complaints from residents, the board voted 14-1 to ban paintball games on city property, effectively putting the sport out of business locally and putting Milford on the front line of paintball legislation nationwide.
The city attorney, Marilyn Lipton, said she believed Milford was the first municipality in the country to ban the sport on public land. For paintball players around the state, it just figures.
"In terms of paintball, Connecticut is the worst place in the world," said David Lewis, who works at Eastern Paintball, a store in Branford dedicated to paintball accessories.
His is not a wayward opinion; for people fond of paintball -- a kind of capture-the-flag team game played in the woods, mostly by boys or men in Army-surplus camouflage and protective masks who shoot bursting pellets at 280 feet per second -- playing in densely populated western Connecticut is like crossing Interstate 95 on foot. Not entirely popular.
Mayor James L. Richetelli Jr., a Republican who supports the board's vote, said paintball was fun -- he even played years ago, before he married -- but incompatible with Milford's park system. In 28-acre Eisenhower Park, he said, pedestrians on hiking trails have encountered paintball players shooting or being shot from somewhere in the woods.
Other residents have called the police to report "people in the park with guns," he said.
"It's just not a good mix," Mayor Richetelli said. Especially given the terrorist attacks last year, he added, "In this day and age, reports of people in the woods with guns is just not a good idea."
Joe Mulvihill Jr., the co-owner of Splatter Zone, a family-run paintball store in Milford, said city officials were overreacting.
"It's going to hurt business," he said today. "People are not going to let their kids play as much." Besides, he said, Eisenhower Park has plenty of secluded woods. The "weapons," made of colorful aluminum stocks and fitted with a tank of pressurized gas, don't look anything like real guns. Paintball, invented in New Hampshire 20 years ago by timber company workers marking trees, is a perfectly safe and fun game, he said, if a tad intense.
What's more, contrary to what Ms. Lipton, the city attorney, has said publicly, paintball pellets are made of biodegradable vegetable oil, not lead, latex or anything else environmentally unfriendly.
Alderman Nick Veccharelli Jr., one of five Democrats on Milford's 15-member board and the only one to vote against the paintball ban, said he was "ashamed" that his city is now known as the first in America to ban the sport.
"Sometimes I wonder why we have to come up with all these laws that regulate our citizens," he said. "Anything that's fun gets a big circle with line through it."
On the same night as the vote to ban paintball, the board narrowly defeated a proposal to ban the use of all-terrain vehicles on city property. In February, the aldermen also voted to restrict wet-jets -- personal watercraft -- from exceeding six miles per hour on Milford's Gulf Pond.
And about 10 years ago, the board imposed a curfew on Gulf Beach after 10 p.m. -- to get rid of young troublemakers, Mr. Veccharelli said, and never fulfilled its promise to consider rescinding the ban once the beach was safe again.
"It was a nice place to pull off the road to watch the water," he said. "Why did we have to lose that?
"We still live in what I'd like to believe is a small-town community," he went on. "And it seems like we're on a fast pace to urbanize our way of thinking, where you can't do anything at all."
Instead of banning paintball, Mr. Veccharelli said, a more reasonable approach would have required paintball players to wear bright uniforms, use fluorescent orange guns that don't look threatening, and post little metal signs, like those that janitors use to keep people off wet floors, along the perimeter of paintball games to avoid startling the public.
Mr. Mulvihill of Splatter Zone said Milford was home to 200 to 300 dedicated paintball players, ranging in age from 10 to 60. Gearing up to play is not cheap. The guns at Splatter Zone (which aren't called guns, but markers, because "we're trying to be more politically correct," one employee said) range from $200 to $1,000, not including the paintball hopper that feeds the gun or the nitrogen tanks that power it.
Appearances aside, paintball fans say, it is all quite harmless.
"Years ago, kids used to go out with pellet guns and shoot wild animals," Mr. Veccharelli said. "How devastating was that?"
http://www.nytimes.com
GRAPHIC: Photo: Joe Mulvihill Jr., a co-owner of a paintball store in Milford, Conn., with a marker (some would say gun) used in the game. Another store owner has called Connecticut "the worst place in the world" for paintball. (Richard L. Harbus for The New York Times)
LOAD-DATE: March 11, 2002