A man was recently cited for defacing petroglyphs with a paintball gun in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Not only was this a stupid thing to do for himself and his legal future, it's a stupid thing for the sport of paintball. I've mentioned it more than once, and I'll probably mention it again, but it makes me mad that the majority of news coverage of the sport of paintball involves vandalism or other criminal activity. I'm sure that thousands of people successfully played paintball on the very day that this idiot shot up the petroglyphs, but they won't get a single mention by the press, only the one guy who caused problems.
Paintball is a great sport that almost anyone can enjoy, but countless people will never try it because of the negative actions of a few people. Just think, if all someone ever heard about the sport is that people use the gear to vandalize property or shoot unsuspecting passersby, why would that person even want to learn about the positive aspects of the game? The simple truth is that for all the good that thousands of paintball players can do to positively depict the sport, more bad can be done in just a few seconds by one person who doesn't have any common sense. Now you and I and everyone else who cares about paintball's image have that much more work to do to clear up more misrepresentations of the sport. Lucky us.
Comments
It is sad that things like this happen but from my 15 years in the industry can say that it is usually not paintball players committing the crimes.
More times than not, the vandals are people that took their friends gun or purchased one from Walmart, Dicks, Sports Authority ect….
Those are the main culprits that don’t care about the sport or the reputation that serious players try and uphold.
While yes it is very sad that paint balling is being given a bad name by some idiot, but isn’t the fact that he was defacing sacred ground a little more important?? These are the treasures of a people who were treated horribly by Americans, and we still continue to treat them like crap by paint balling over their sacred work! Who cares that it is giving paint ball a bad name, he destroyed park property, and now millions of people will miss out on seeing these truly amazing petroglyphs, that is the real issue here, not paint ball.