Can Paintball Guns Kill You? Has Anyone been Killed Yet?

It’s a question that has been debated for years – can paintball guns kill you? The answer, it seems, is yes. But the extent to which they can kill you depends on several factors, including the type of gun you are using and how close the shot is.

The way in which they can kill you is pretty straightforward.  If a paintball, or rather an ammunition round (which is different from a paintball), strikes you or anyone else at a high velocity then it will cause some damage to your body.

Depending on the speed of the round and where it makes contact with your body, it can do some pretty nasty damage.

Has Paintball Killed Anyone Yet?

The short answer is yes. There have been a small number of cases in which people have died from paintball injuries. There have been several documented cases in which paintball injuries have caused people to die relatively quickly.

In some cases, the paintballs were fired at close range and struck major arteries in the neck or head. In others, it was more subtle, with paintballs hitting people in sensitive areas such as their eyes. In the majority of these cases, the victims were left blind or with permanently impaired vision.

In some cases, paintballs have struck people in their chest, resulting in cardiac contusions. This is especially bad for older players who are more susceptible to heart-related injuries.

How Much Damage Can Paintballs Do?

Since paintball rounds are relatively small, it’s hard to say exactly what damage they can do.

Most of the rounds are made from gelatin, which is designed to expand on impact. This allows the round to transfer its kinetic energy into whatever it hits, allowing for some serious damage. It also means that paintballs will deform when they hit hard surfaces like metal or concrete.

Paintball guns can fireballs at speeds of up to 300 feet per second. This makes them powerful enough to break the skin but not strong enough to penetrate muscle tissue. Depending on how close you are when you are hit, paintballs can also cause fractures of small bones.

Paintballs have been known to do some pretty major damage in very few circumstances. The most notable is when a paintball hits someone in the eye. This can cause serious damage to the cornea, tear ducts, and retina.

However painful these injuries are, they are usually not immediately life-threatening unless it hits someone’s brain or enters their skull. Even then, death is unlikely if it hits them without hitting any major blood vessels on the way there.

What is the Most Dangerous Part of a Paintball?

There are two main aspects that can make paintballs dangerous.

The first is anything that can accelerate them to high speeds. This includes paintball guns themselves, but also anything that the balls might hit along the way.

The second is the paintball itself. The gelatin that makes up a paintball is designed to expand on impact. If a round strikes you in a soft area, it can cause serious internal damage that can be very dangerous.

If you are hit in any vital organs, the paintball could do some real damage. If you are shot on your chest or abdomen, even if there is no penetration by the round, bruising of the organs could be enough to kill you.

Paintballs also have some potential to cause severe and life-threatening infections if they break the skin. The gelatin shell contains nothing more than food dye and dye from whatever base you are shooting. This can lead to some pretty nasty infections in open wounds.

How Dangerous Are Paintballs If They Hit You on the Head?

There is a good chance that paintballs can kill you if they hit you in the head. However, this is somewhat circumstantial and depends on a number of factors including how fast it is moving when it hits you and if it enters your brain.

The speed of paintballs at point-blank range is about 160 feet per second (about 50 miles per hour). This means that if they hit you they can do some serious damage. If they hit an artery or your brain, they could kill you very quickly.

One study showed that paintballs striking the head at high speed had a 100 percent mortality rate. This makes sense given that paintballs are made to expand on impact and the head is one of the softest parts of your body.

Another study showed some potentially deadly effects of paintballs even at low speeds. If the balls hit the head, they were able to cause serious damage to brain tissue by causing contusions on impact.

The balls also caused some minor bleeding in the brain that was enough to cause death or serious neurological deficit if there was more than one area of bleeding.

That said, you can survive a paintball strike to the head even at high speed if it doesn’t hit your brain. It might just leave you unconscious or with some serious contusions that need medical attention. Even then, there is still the possibility of causing a major bleed in your brain without fracturing your skull due to the gelatin shell.

How Dangerous Is a Paintball If It Hits Your Eye?

The most dangerous thing about paintballs is that they can hit your eye. You might think this would be the easiest way to die given how many ballistics studies there are on eyeballs, but it isn’t always deadly. Most of the time you will just end up with a black eye or a broken orbital bone.

However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t worry about it. If the paintball hits your eye at high speed and penetrates the retina, you could lose all vision in that eye permanently.

There is also a chance of damage to your optic nerve which could lead to loss of vision in both eyes. There have also been reports of cataracts being caused by paintballs in the past.

Even if you just get a black eye, there is still potential for some major damage around your eyes. If you are stuck in the orbital bones close to your eyes, they could fracture and cause permanent disfigurement or nerve damage that could seriously impact your life.

There are also infections that are associated with getting hit in the eye with almost anything. This could lead to corneal damage that is very hard for even trained physicians to repair.

All of this has drawn warnings from the CDC about eye protection when playing paintball games. It recommends wearing goggles or other facial protection to prevent serious damage to the eyes.

Conclusion:

Paintball injuries are no joke. Although most of the time they aren’t deadly, paintballs have been known to cause blindness and death in extreme cases.

If you plan on playing paintball with your friends, be sure to give them a heads up about where you are going so that if something does happen, help can get to you in time.

Although paintballs are relatively safe in most situations, they can still cause injuries to the head or eyes that could be deadly. It is best to respect them for what they are and treat every paintball-related injury with care.