. You gotta remember paintball is up to 16.2J and there's no MED.
There are MEDs in paintball
It just depends on what ruleset you are on
16.2 or 16.3 joules do get mentioned as a comparative limit to Airsoft based on the 12 ft lbs of a rifle type air weapon
Big but ….. nobody knows what the legal velocity / energy limit is for paintball because it doesn’t have the luxury of the Policing and Crime act setting a compliant 2 joule Airsoft gun as outside of the firearms act.
First there is the 6 or 12 foot pounds of a pistol or rifle type of air weapon in the firearms act.
But it has not been accepted if a paintball gun is a pistol or rifle - they didn’t have rifled barrels and were pistol like in size
But the real problem for Scotland’s paintball sites was they kept being raided and prosecuted for firearms offences paintball guns ran on CO2 not air
Somewhere in late 80s to 90s case law that set an allowance for paintball in the region of 320-330 ish fps (approx 12 ft lbs of a typical .68” paintball of the time)
So 300fps was adopted for tournaments, 280fps for general play and 250-260fps for CQB / indoor
.50” paintball made a final successful comeback for the rental fleet, and for ease (perhaps someone read the small print that I will get to) they stuck to the same 280fps even though there if the scope for higher velocity due to the lower mass to stay within energy
.50” then crept in to the magfed market, and they asked for higher velocity. Some sites said yes
But then people read the small print
Paintball goggles have international standards, the lens impact velocity is tested to much higher levels but the entire goggle system design standard for all components is to survive a 300fps impact (not the energy but the velocity)
Shoot someone with a .50” low impact paintball at 301fps and you’re not playing paintball but committing a potential firearms offence because you are shooting a person with an air weapon
Having explicit legislation on Airsoft looks pretty convenient and a luxury
