What got you started in airsoft?

[Inked]

Mine started when I was researching a practice gun for IPSC.  Found the SCAA, meet Robin and the rest was history.  Play straight for a year and a half.  Sold all my stuff after my son was born, when my son turned 1, I decided to start playing again.  By that time the AOSC had formed, and I could actually play locally, thanks to the air farm.  Met a lot of new people and got a chance to shoot a lot of old friends.  And a HUGE thanks goes out to Gabe for getting me back into it again.

[Vesper]

I've always been interested in weapons since I was a little kid. The first time I have ever shot a gun was when I was 6.
I hung around with my buddies with plastic pistols and just had a great fun.

I moved to Austria, and one of my friends invited me to this Airsoft game, so I packed my bag, put a camera in it and headed to Tirol with him. After that, I was absolutely hooked to Airsoft.

And now here I am, in SC, playing with a great group of people.

[Jeremy314]

Well... I suppose it all started many many years ago... Me and My friends would go out into the woods and have BB gun wars.. those .177 cal metal bbs hurt, and we were stupid enough not to wear eye pro back then. So as time passed I got more into the FPS/TPS gaming community and in '08 picked up SOCOM: Confrontation and met up with some guys that I had a lot of fun shooting people with, and it turns out that one of them palyed airsoft up in Ohio nearly every weekend.

A couple of years prior I'd seen some springers and a couple AEGs at my local Dick's Sports, but didn't pay that much attention to them because I figured it was a bit childish to want one, boy was I wrong . My friend told me about his G&G M14 and how he loved it, which prompted me to finally get into the sport with an Echo 1 G36c which I still own and use from time to time.

[Slate]

I started back in 2001, mid-September (yeah, you read that right). Started out with a spring MP5 that served me well until I bought my first AEG, an Airsoft Elite MP5A4. Yeah, that was way back when Airsoft Elite were the top of the line. I don't even know if AE still sells AEGs.

Anyway, I played with a group of guys from my high school for about 4 years before moving down to SC. Helped start the original SCAA, formed SWARM, had a good thing going. I went to college, SWARM dissolved (then started back up, but wasn't as good, duh).

The rest of the story you all pretty much know. Basically, I got started after springer wars like most people. I can't even remember how many AEGs I've had in the 8 years or so since I started.

[idiot88]

Back in the mid 80's, my friends and I used to have BB gun fights.  Sometimes we wore goggles or safety glasses, and sometimes not.  We also used to have bottle rocket fights.  Those were the good ole days... and the good ole days eventually came to an end; however, I was ALWAYS still thinking about how much I loved the BB gun fights.  Whenever I saw woods with hilly or rocky areas, I always thought how cool it would be to have a BB gun fight there.  Everytime I went to Disney World, I dreamed of having BB gun wars there.

Now jump to May 2007.  I got a wife and two girls.  My nine year old starts talking about the kid down the streets airsoft gun and how it was real powerful.  In the past, I had heard of radio controlled toy tanks that shot each other with some type of (airsoft?) gun and seen video of the wars but did not really associate them with each other.  She then said her friends had bought some pistols at the local flea market and wanted to get one.  I said I would take her.  Well, my wife beat me to it and took her to the flea market, and they found the pistol.  I was disappointed that they did not wait for me because I thought buying a gun would be a father/child type of activity, not a mother/child activity.  My daughter said they also had RIFLES there.  I said, hmmmm, an airsoft rifle sounds pretty cool, maybe I will take her there and get her one, and so off we went.  We found a couple of M4 type springer rifles, and I couldn't decide which one to get.  The Asian sales lady, who did not seem to speak a lot of English, pointed to a note on one box that said AUTOMATIC, so I got excited and bought that one for $30.  It was the Double Eagle M83A2 (http://www.amazon.com/Replica-Double-Eagle-Automatic-Electric/dp/B000PSQWOK).  We played with it for little while and were impressed with the fully automatic capability.  The bad thing was that the accuracy sucked.  I then started looking on the internet for airsoft guns and found that there were a LOT of better airsoft guns for sale on the web.  I promptly ordered a metal M14.  I then wondered if there were other people, hopefully adults, who played airsoft somewhere near me.  I did not initially find much of anything, and then I searched "airsoft south carolina" and found the SCAA website, and the rest is history.

[Dominum]

About 4 or 5 years ago I was at the flea market with my girlfriend looking for something to buy. Guess what caught my eye? An absurdly crappy 3/4 scale springer SVD clone that was $15. I had never heard of airsoft guns before, and promptly Googled. Before long I had a massive arsenal of LPEGs, springers, and shotties, all cheap, and all craptastic. I got a bunch of my friends to come over to an unoccupied house that a friend of mine let me use, and we played on the weekends for a good while. Before long I noticed the superior quality guns and the SCAA games. I bought one, and went to an RSR game in the summer of '08. I loved it. Soon I joined a new team called GRAVE, and learned to do tech work. After a while I was doing it for the whole team, and then a bunch of other people, so I thought "What the heck, if I charge for it, I can use the money to invest in a high yield intl. currency diversified IRA buy more airsoft stuff", so I did. After a while, I got fed up with the actions of a few bad apples in the SCAA, so I asked around to see if anyone wanted to help me make a new start for airsoft in SC. It turns out that a few people did, and thus the AOSC was born in my living room on Sept. 20, 2009. That seems to have worked out pretty well, at least I think so. I've owned just about every AEG you can think of, but only played with a few of them regularly. It is no surprise I've never owned much gear (and even less good gear lol), it's just not my thing, I'm more into improving weapons than loadouts.

[SteevoLS]

Lies, all lies.

[MCG]

Lies, all lies.

Indeed. Al Gore is actually responsible for the founding of the AOSC, and Dom is quite the geardo, though he never lets on to it.

[MetalWarrior]

Tell your stories! A little extra background information never hurts for your airsoft buddies.

---

I got started about 2 years ago when a friend got a clear LPEG from Wal-Mart. b][/center]

*UBR, MOE, MIAD, UBR, T1, VFG, DD, ATG, etc, etc.

R70= pwnge!!!!!!1

[MCG]

R70= pwnge!!!!!!1

Those were the days...

[MetalWarrior]

Those were the days...

]
Those actually did make for better backyard wars though

[Esteban]

My roommate at Clemson were at Walmart and found airsoft guns. We thought it would be cool to get a couple of pistols and shoot each other in our dorm rooms. We bought some pistols and had a great time building barriers and shooting each other (with eye protection, of course).
We eventually looked up more on airsoft and went out to a plot of land in Sumter to play with our springers. I ordered my first AEG as a "graduating from my first year at Clemson" present to myself. It was a DBoys S-System that I thought was the coolest thing ever.
Eventually we found BattleCats where I bought my MP5, and I took it out to a Clemson airsoft practice, and I became more hooked. Since then I've sold two AEGs (Thompson and G36k) and bought three (M4, M16, AK) and purchased a bunch of gear.