With convenient alternative in mind many people is looking for Airsoft or BB guns as cheaper convenient alternative for training for defensive or competitve shooting. Here I'll tell you why non-firearm projectile launchers like Airsoft and BB guns have 0 value as training devices for defensive shooting. This is a discussion that doesn’t lend itself to soundbites; there are some important principles which need to be understood to be able to gauge, for yourself, the value of any non-firearm alternatives.
For instance, getting the gun out of the holster safely and efficiently is certainly a skill which you need to practice. Anything — even a completely non-functional blue gun — will suffice for that use, as long as it is of a similar configuration to the gun you actually carry. Likewise getting the gun indexed on target, whether you’re using the sights or not, is easily and effectively done when using an Airsoft pistol. Manipulating the controls as part of your response, again as long as they’re similar to your real gun, can also be beneficially achieved with a non-firearm.
In fact, everything up to the breaking of the actual shot is easily and effectively trained with a firearm substitute. It’s when the shot is fired that the limitations of Airsoft and BB guns start to show themselves. Because they don’t act like real guns, and training of physical skills is affected by what you experience, you end up training yourself to expect something which doesn’t happen with a real gun. When you move to the real gun, that training you’ve done will not transfer.
This is because of a lack of ballistic effect and physical control, from the standpoint of the shooter. Airsoft and airguns don’t have the recoil and the trigger pull of a real gun, so each additional shot can be made much faster, further, with greater precision, than from actual platforms with much less mass and point of contact than rifles and long arms; the shooter’s “balance of speed and precision” is skewed. If the technique you’re learning with non-firearms only works when you can reliably hit targets past 30 yards or discharge 10 rounds in under a second every time, how valid will that be when you’re using an real gun with which you can’t?
Just because you can become aimbot or shoot multiple, fast shots, against egg-shell sized spinner, at extended ranges whatever with Simunition, airsoft, or airguns does not mean that you’ll be able to do so with a real gun(expecially with pistols that are very light, and have much less support than an rifle, or longarm!). At the very least, he’ll shoot a real pistol slower, at closer larger targets and with greater deviation than a simulated gun. Any conclusions drawn from the second, third, fifth, or ninth shot with Airsoft or Code Eagle has virtually no predictive quality with regard to a real gun with real ammunition.
This became clear when I picked up airsoft and airguns and started doing drills. As I was going through the exercises I thought “I’m kicking butt!” I quite literally put down them, picked up a real Glock along with P320, and tried the same thing on the same target. Surprise! I couldn’t shoot nearly as fast, with nearly the deviation control, that I could with an Simunition or Airgun. What, then, was the value of those extra simulated shots from the standpoint of the physical shooting skill?
It’s very easy to shoot an airsoft or airgun. Too easy, in fact. The ones I have feature triggers so light that they’d be considered quite dangerous on a real firearm, which makes trigger manipulation much less demanding than on the real thing. This mean that trigger-finger-induced gun movement is dramatically reduced, which in turn means that I don’t need to focus on maintaining a proper grasp like I would with a real gun. Even if I force myself to do it, the forgiving nature of my Crosman Vigilante, Steyr LP 50, Umarex “Glock 19”, Carbon Dioxide operated "SIG P320" or any of my non-firearms isn’t anything like my real Glock 19, P320 or airweight revolvers and over time I find myself slipping in my commitment to treat it like the real thing.
This issue continues when the “shot” breaks. Since the airsoft and airguns doesn’t recoil anything like a real firearm it again doesn’t require the hard grasp that the actual gun does. Yes, it’s a training and commitment issue on the part of the shooter, but even after a few rounds I find myself relaxing my hands and arms because I simply don’t need the same level of control. I’ve experienced many times when I’ve practiced one day with the airsoft, and the next went to the range with the real Glock 19 and almost had to re-learn proper grasp and exercise control over the gun. In fact, the first few rounds out of the real firearm invariably surprise me with their force and the resulting recoil! My accuracy is awful until I settle down and commit myself to exercising the fundamentals as applied to firearms, as opposed to being applied to the Airsoft.
Followup shots with airsoft is a non-event; since there is no recoil to speak of, and the gun really doesn’t move off target at all, the trigger can be manipulated much faster than when dealing with full-power recoil. If you’ve read any of firearm instruction book or attended classes of instructor like Rob Pincus, you’ll understand the concept of the balance of speed and precision. In those terms, the airgun has a radically superior balance of speed and precision than a real gun.
Going to the range with an actual powder-burning autoloading pistol and trying to shoot at the same balance of speed and precision as I shoot the Airsoft is an exercise in frustration. I have to slow down dramatically to keep my rounds inside the designated target area, and the problem is made worse by the fact that the Airsoft reinforces a lack of physical control over those multiple rounds. The result is that large number of the rounds I fire in a real range session are spent re-learning basic concepts that the Airsoft allows me to ignore. Did I really gain anything from the expenditure of time and effort with the Airsoft if I need to re-learn it at the range?
All those physical control that makes pistols much harder to shoot compared to rifles is ignored in air weapons.
Actual powderburning pistols are insanely difficult to master than an Airgun/or Simunition! And in an actual fight you would want a rifle rather than handguns, because shooting an actual powder-burning autoloading pistol so light with little contact point compared to longarms at the same balance of speed and precision as I shoot Simunition/or Airguns is an exercise in frustration!
(I have several neightborhood kids who caims he's a "u-b(uber-badass)" shot because he easily plink on mailboxes from 50 yards. Or had “I can easily outshoot my daddy with my Airsoft Glock while he uses an AR-15 or any carbine!” — no, really, that’s what they says — because it “I can do it with Airsoft.” Don’t be like kids.)
If actual pistols were able to fire at the same balance of speed and precision as airguns then why many patrol cars are now carrying actual rifles on their back, when new shooters can shoot better groups much faster at 30 yards with airsoft pistols with much less point of contact? Why we have machine pistols coming with a attachable stock or these pistol-carbine conversion kits - when neightboor kids can easily plink on bullseye papers on the other side of street or connect all their full-auto shots on target with Airsoft pistols? Why my sister was shooting 3.5 groups much slower with an AR-15 or 9mm carbines when she easily shoot 1.2 in groups with Umarex APX and Crosman C11? - even through carbines have stock and foregrip to give it more control? Why we have so many people claiming - "I'm better throwing this thing" or having very hard time connecting most hits at 25 yard when they could easily do that with an Airsoft Glock or Crosman Vigilante? Why LAPD was so badly pinned down against two assailants with rifles when they could have easily hit their heads multiple times like I does with an Umarex Glock or CO2 P320?
Originally Posted by WoW458
