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Rat-a-tat realism of air guns calls young warriors to battle

These are no ordinary BB guns: mock AK-47s and M-16s. As critics raise concerns, kids say war games are just for fun.

By DAVID KARP
Published December 24, 2004

[Times photo: Michael Rondou]

Aaron Geisler, 22, of Bellair Beach races across a clearing during an airgun game in Pinellas Park this month. Geisler said participants enjoy the anticipation. "It's about stalking your prey," he said. "Almost like hunting."

As darkness settles in, Nolan Sandorf girds himself for battle.

His face is colored with dark paint to conceal himself from the enemy. He is dressed in black.

Crouched behind a barricade in an abandoned yard, Sadorf sucks in his breath and reloads his weapon, an M-16 semiautomatic.

His heart pounds.

Sadorf is an eighth-grader at Keswick Christian School in St. Petersburg, and he and his buddies are playing war.

"It's the closest you can get to war without the fear of dying," says a friend, Scott Fanders, 14.

That's what has some parents worried.

A new sport gaining popularity among teenagers looks so much like warfare that some critics say it blurs the lines between reality and make-believe. Safety advocates say putting air guns in the hands of kids invites real-life danger. Police officials say they are concerned that toy guns will look so real that they'll be fooled.

"We really feel kids under 16 years of age should not be using those," said Scott Wolfson, spokesman for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has not regulated air guns.

But many parents say the game teaches teamwork and strategy, like other sports. When used responsibly, the guns don't harm, they say. The plastic pellets injure less than a hit from a linebacker on the junior varsity football squad.

"For now, it's clean fun," said Sadoft's father, Scott, who also has taken his 13-year-old son to a real firing range.

This Christmas, lots of teenagers are expecting air guns under the tree. David "Isaac" Huntley, 13, another Keswick Christian eighth-grader, expects to find a Desert Eagle handgun.

His grandmother, he said, is buying it for him.

It's 8 a.m. Saturday in an empty office park, and the Belcher Boys are scrambling for position.

In woods behind a warehouse off Belcher Road, Shane Franklin fills a clip in his automatic handgun.

He's a baby-faced 15-year-old - too young to drive. But he's wearing the latest digital forest camouflage, which someone in the Marines mailed to him through a friend.

His fellow warrior, Nathan Powell, 17, straps a holster around his leg.

Soon, they are squatting on the ground, behind trees and an embankment, waiting for the enemy to attack. Their eyes scan the area.

Back and forth.

Left and right.

They watch for 30 minutes.

"Do you see them?" Powell whispers. "Do you see them?"

Then, a burst of gunfire. Aaron Geisler, 22, comes charging from palmetto brushes, his machine gun spewing ammo.

This is what the participants love: the anticipation, the silent strategy, the moments of quick chaos.

"It's about stalking your prey," Geisler said. "Almost like hunting."

Air gun Web sites that promote the games are loaded with talk of real war. There are forums on sniper tactics, combat formations and stories from soldiers in Iraq.

Air gun leagues model games after actual battles, like the U.S. ambush in Mogadishu, Somalia. In Hudson this month, a team played on 27 acres using a base they called Vietnam Village. In Lithia, a group played a war game - Operation Jungle Snow Drift - based on tactics used by a South American narco terrorist group.

The killing is fake, but the guns look real - and can cost as much as lethal firearms. On one air gun Web site based in Atlanta, a AK-47 Marui retails for $299, and an Uzi sells for $219. Kids as young as 14 can buy an air gun at Wal-Mart for as little as $40.

Players can also upgrade weapons with tripods, sniper scopes and automatic tracers. Or they can drop hundreds buying night vision goggles, combat vests and hand grenades.

Sales are taking off.

The sport, which started in Asia and spread to California, remains in its infancy in the Southeast, promoters say. But it's growing much like paintball, which exploded in the 1980s.

The North Eastern Airsoft Group, which operates on the Internet in New England and mid Atlantic states, had about 30 members five years ago. Today, it has almost 1,000 players. Recent games have attracted as many as 100.

"Since the beginning of the summer, the interest in Airsoft has really picked up," said Skip Hudson, president of the U.S. Airsoft Corp.

Dylan Hubbard, an eighth-grader at Keswick Christian, has noticed it.

He used to have trouble finding friends to wage air gun battles with. This week, he invited six classmates to an air gun fight supervised by adults. Most of his friends had guns, or were getting them for Christmas.

"Even the girls are getting them," he said.

The call came into the Pinellas County 911 center.

On the Dunedin Causeway by the beach, four kids were sitting in a 1990 Cadillac, passing around a silver handgun, the caller said.

Detective Troy Compton made a U-turn on Curlew Road and raced to the scene. At the beach, cruisers quickly surrounded the Cadillac, and a 16-year-old girl walked out, hands over her head.

In the back of the car, deputies found a gun that looked and felt like a Beretta Model 92.

It was an air gun.

None of the teenagers were hurt, but the incident underscored concerns teenagers with make-believe guns will be mistaken for armed assailants - and shot.

So far, air guns have not caused a major problem in the Tampa Bay area, law enforcement officials say. Pinellas deputies got about 60 calls last year about the guns.

They included reports of kids firing air guns at cars near an elementary school in Palm Harbor, a teenager shooting pellets at students outside Seminole High School, and someone shooting near a school bus stop in Madeira Beach.

In Tampa, a 18-year-old used an air rifle to shoot at a school bus last month.

Kids say the air guns - unlike BB guns - don't penetrate the skin. But doctors say they can break bone if fired up close.

"They're not harmless," said Dr. Denise Dowd, an emergency room physician in Kansas City who's seen a kid die from a air gun blast to his head. Dowd served on a committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics that studied injuries from air guns and BB guns. They found air rifles cause scores of injuries and about four deaths a year.

Most of the victims are young boys, Dowd said.

Even air gun enthusiasts agree no one younger than 18 should play. Most leagues limit play to adults. The city of Baltimore banned the sale of air guns to anyone younger than 18.

Teenagers who shoot real guns for competition generally stay away from air guns too.

"Airsoft has no formal discipline," said Bill Gagne, coach of the Wyoming Antelope junior shooting team in Pinellas Park. "Our sport is very, very disciplined."

Most gun stores in Pinellas don't carry the Airsoft guns, either.

Said Andy Anderson, manager of Kastle Keep Guns in Largo: "We don't like to attract the kids."

Tuesday night, the teenagers in combat behind a Clearwater house were killed dozens of times. Mostly, they didn't flinch. They did scream - out of excitement.

Though they look real, air guns don't carry the power or kickback of a real firearm. Fired at a distance, the plastic air gun pellets just bounce off a jacket.

Mark Hubbard, father of Dylan, says he considers the game a healthy outlet.

Tuesday night, the kids race around and scream for more than two hours. The boys get bored with the backyard and venture into a wooded lot behind the property, where they blow off more steam, firing shots in the night.

"Kids go through a phase when they want to do dangerous things," Hubbard said. "Hopefully, this is their adrenaline release."

Only Sadorf's sister, Jene'e, a college senior, bowed out of the game. She's been hit at close range too many times by her brother. She had the marks to prove it.

"It makes me bleed," she said.

David Karp can be reached at karp@sptimes.com or 727 893-8439.

[Last modified December 24, 2004, 00:22:13]