Paint-ball guns spark vandalism

PHILADELPHIA – Purple-splattered windows. Red-pocked mailboxes. Multicolored globs covering parking lots and cars.

Paint ball, one of the world’s fastest-growing and most popular extreme sports, has spilled into the street as a messy form of vandalism that is a nuisance for homeowners and police regionally and nationally.

State laws governing the sale of paint-ball guns, or “markers,” make them easy to acquire, although some municipalities have responded with their own ordinances to govern how owners use them – particularly when drive-by attacks have been aimed at pedestrians.

In July, the city of Wilmington, Del., approved a ban on the use of paint-ball guns by minors after a child was seriously hurt.

Paint-ball equipment malfunctions, meanwhile, have led to two recent deaths in California.

Started as a game in the early 1980s, paint ball is a sophisticated combination of childhood hide-and-seek and tag. Today, paint-ball competitions and gear sales make up a multimillion-dollar industry. Commercial playing fields operate in 25 countries. The biggest paint-ball events draw thousands of players and spectators; purses can total hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Paint ball is played both as a recreational and professional sport on outdoor fields on which competitors in helmets, goggles and other protective gear try to mark each other. The balls are nontoxic, water-based pellets with contents that are easy to wash off.

On the playing fields, proponents say, paint ball is safer than golf.

But off the fields, police have received dozens of complaints of vandalism and, in some cases, serious injuries and damage to homes.

“We had a couple of incidents where people were freezing the paint balls and hitting people,” said Inspector William Colarulo, a Philadelphia police spokesman. “We get these incidents periodically and we do take them extremely seriously. Any person caught shooting paint balls at people will be charged with aggravated assault. That’s a felony.”

In New York’s Dutchess and Putnam counties, four teenagers were indicted in April by a grand jury after videotaping a weeklong vandalism spree in December on stores and homes using, among other things, BB and paint-ball guns.

That same month, pranksters saturated a vacant Harrison Township, N.J., church with paint balls.

In Morrisville, Pa., several teenagers were arrested in December in connection with drive-by paint-ball shootings. Police confiscated a paint-ball machine gun, which can sustain fire of three to 12 rounds per second.

In Middletown Township, Pa., residents have been dealing with paint-ball attacks for years. In 1999, the township passed an ordinance that prohibits use of paint balls or any air-powered guns against people or property.

But the problem hasn’t stopped.

In recent weeks, dozens of homes in a new development behind the police station have been splashed with paint balls. One homeowner, Rita Keenan, said she has had to wash paint off her house three times this year.

“It’s annoying to say the least,” Keenan said. “Although I haven’t suffered any real damage as some of my neighbors have, waking up to find your house splattered with paint is not the best way to start your day.” She said one neighbor had to replace exterior siding that was knocked off the house by paint-ball shots.

Last month, a 15-year-old boy took a paint-ball potshot at a Lower Makefield, Pa., police car. He was arrested, issued a citation, and released to his parents.

But injuries caused by paint-ball guns have led to more serious action.

In July, Wilmington Councilwoman Stephanie Bolden sponsored an ordinance that prohibits minors from possessing or firing the guns inside city limits after Ny’Mere Johnson of Wilmington was shot in the right eye with a frozen paint ball in November. The trauma from the hit caused the boy to develop a cataract, a condition that causes the normally clear lens to turn opaque.

Latoria Webb, Ny’Mere’s mother, said the boy had surgery to remove the cataract on Jan. 14 – just nine days after his fourth birthday. He now wears an implant lens and has to use bifocals. His mother said Ny’Mere often has nightmares about the incident and talks about shooting the youths who shot him.

“My son wasn’t born with problems,” Webb said. “Now he has to wear these glasses for the rest of his life over something this stupid.”

In March, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning that addressed another danger from paint-ball markers. After two deaths in California, it advised users to ensure that the pressurized carbon dioxide valve is secured.

A 15-year-old Olympia, Calif., boy was killed in 2003 after trying to remove the valve from his marker. In February, a 37-year-old schoolteacher and mother of two was killed at her son’s paint-ball birthday party. An exploding carbon dioxide canister hit the woman in the back of the head.

In 2003, the commission received 19,504 reports from emergency rooms across the country of injuries caused by gas-, air- or spring-operated guns; 2,600 of those were eye injuries caused by paint balls.

Though potentially dangerous and an instrument of mischief in the wrong hands, paint balls and the markers are easy to get. They are sold at sporting-goods and discount stores and over the Internet, and they range in price from $40 to $2,000. The markers come in a variety of styles, sizes and configurations. The most common is the semiautomatic, which uses compressed air and fires pellets that travel faster than 200 mph. The paint balls, which resemble gum balls, come in several colors and sizes.

While the sale of spray paint requires signs warning consumers of the penalties for acts of graffiti, no state laws specifically address the sale of paint-ball guns.

Pennsylvania’s only statute regarding paint balls, enacted two years ago, prohibits carrying a loaded paint-ball marker in a car. The law was sparked by an angry victim of vandalism in Wayne County, Pa., after stained-glass windows in his Victorian home were shot out with paint balls.

In recent years, some towns have enacted their own laws that prohibit use or possession of paint-ball markers.

In Cheltenham Township, Pa., paint-ball guns or air rifles are prohibited on highways or public lands unless they are unloaded or securely wrapped. It is also against the law for any person to discharge a paint-ball gun on public or private land without permission of the owners.

In East Goshen, Pa., firing any weapon, including any air-powered gun, within the township is banned except on an approved range.

Eric Holland, manager of the paint-ball shop Fireball Mountain in Fairless Hills, Pa., said he does not sell the guns to anyone younger than 18, and he tries to teach children and parents about safe use of the equipment.

“We consider it very much our responsibility to educate our customers on the proper use of the marker,” Holland said. “We tell parents all the time that this is not a toy. I think this is where people get into trouble.”