Who said we "hate" Airsoft?
Personally, Airsoft is just another one of those oddball "fringe" sports, only a little less popular than paintball. (Yes, I'll admit that even paintball is still somewhat of a "fringe" sport- but then, so is curling, four-man bobsledding and professional bass fishing.)
To gain additional acceptance, and to reduce uninformed public dislike of the sport, paintballers have generally, voluntarily, distanced themselves from the early military aspect.
Yes, early on we used BDU camos, surplus loadbearing harnesses, and covered our "guns" in camoflage tape. But to present a somewhat more publically-acceptable face, most have switched to colorful jerseys, shiny "markers" and made-for-the-sport harnesses.
In the days of one-shot pumps and quarter-a-ball paint out in the woods, camo helped, and players wanted to do the military strategy and formation thing. Nowadays with 18-bps purple-and-chrome markers with more aggregate computing power than an Apple II, paint pushing the one-and-a-half-cent mark, and open fields with colorful, inflatable bunkers, there's no need for either the military look or the military-wannabe tactics.
Most Airsofters, extending from the fact their guns are incredibly realistic to the firearms they're modelled from, go all the way and add camo, military gear and play military or law-enforcement based games.
The two sports, having been only vaguely related in the beginning, have only grown further apart, and are now related only by the fact you're firing a nonlethal projectile with some sort of compressed gas from a gunlike device.
So now, you might ask why the BMX racers don't like Airsoft, or why the skateboarders "hate" paintball, or whatever. You will always find the general population of one sport looking "down" on the general populations of other sports.
The airball guys think shooting each other with 6mm plastic bbs that don't leave a mark, out in the woods, is silly. The Airsofters might think six guys wasting four cases of paint in three minutes running around a bunch of inflatable beach toys is sillier still.
But then, you'll find the same thing within each sport itself- the Airsoft guys split up between military reenactors and law-enforcement practitioners, rifle vs. handgun players, etc. The paintballers split up between the one-shot-one-elimination stock-classers and the case-a-game airball backplayers.
Now, more to the point, can you tell me why you think most paintballers are "immature and irresponsible"?
Doc.
