Paintball is simply a variation on the classic game of tag. What sets it apart is thing you shoot. What do you call it? Is it a paintball gun or a paintball marker?
Many paintball aficionados claim that the proper term is “paintball marker”. Their logic is simple - the point of the game is to “tag” or “mark” your opponent. Really, though, I’m pretty sure that their focus on calling it a paintball marker comes form their desire to distance the sport from violent, extremist, survivalist impressions that many people still have of the sport. “If we call them markers, then we won’t give the impression that we’re hunting other people.” Some even claim that September 11th gave the impetus to really adopt the name and try to separate the sport of paintball from any sort of radical movement.
Those that prefer to call them paintball guns, though, have their own reasons. Their best argument is simply to call it what it is. A gun is a device that shoots projectiles and is actuated by a trigger. A paintball gun fits that billing. While its definitely not a firearm, it’s just as much a gun as a BB gun or squirt gun and there doesn’t seem to be any great push to start calling a squirt gun a “water sprayer”.
What do I call these shooting-things that make the sport of paintball possible? Usually I call them paintball guns - I probably call them markers about 1/4 of the time and guns the rest of the time. On this site, though, I intentionally try to refer to them as paintball guns. Why? This site is primarily geared towards the beginning to intermediate player or to the parents of aspiring players. Typically, new players call them guns because they haven’t ever heard them called anything else. Plus, if you spend any sort of time on the internet you’ll find that the term gun is used much more than the term marker. It boils down to efficiency and accessibility. If 80% of the people online are searching for “guns” and not “markers”, it only makes sense to go with the flow.
I definitely don’t have a problem with people only using the term marker, but I also don’t think that it makes much of a difference in how the sport is perceived. When people think of paintball, they think of the activity, not the semantics of naming the gear. Changing people’s opinions of the sport will depend more on educating people rather than hiding behind deceptive terminology. After all, isn’t a marker really just something you use to draw pictures on construction paper?
