Article: 25858 of rec.sport.paintball From: "James W. Karlinski" Newsgroups: rec.sport.paintball Subject: BATF and silencers Date: 16 Apr 1995 20:50:27 GMT Organization: Illinois Institute of Technology, Academic Computing. (inn) I just read a couple of letters and comments from Bill Mills and the BATF on the WarPig WWW Site. I don't know how far I'm out of the loop because I haven't touched my computer in a couple of months yet... Please, Please, PLEASE! Don't pursue any diolouge with the ATF concerning silencers and PaintBall, unless you plan to manufacture PB silencers (which of course will be compleatly illegal so don't bother). If you plan to make one for yourself, go ahead and do it. What the hell can ATF do about it? However, Mr. Mills should not attempt this because ATF is already planning a military style assualt, seek and destroy mission on your house. You should leave the country now, or prepare for a running gun battle [in which your paintball guns will not suffice]. I implore paintball players to never talk to those [explicative deleted] psycos. I happen to like playing paintball and would be quite distressed if I started noticeing ATF agents walking around like they do at gun shows. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Article: 25902 of rec.sport.paintball From: bonejack@aol.com (Bonejack) Newsgroups: rec.sport.paintball Subject: Re: BATF and silencers Date: 17 Apr 1995 02:07:34 -0400 Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364) Reply-To: bonejack@aol.com (Bonejack) Hmm.... Waco with paintball guns.... I still think they would mess it up Bone ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Article: 25928 of rec.sport.paintball Newsgroups: rec.sport.paintball From: stevem@zimmer.CSUFresno.EDU (Steve Mitchell) Subject: Re: BATF and silencers Organization: CSU Fresno Date: Mon, 17 Apr 1995 17:20:35 GMT ATF AGENTS RAID PAINTBALL COMPOUND - STALEMATE Associated Press Fresno Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agents raided the house of Mr. and Mrs. William and Dawn Mills of Fresno California today in a paint filled raid that has ended in a stalemate. The Fresno man was suspected of possession of knowledge and devices which, if used illegally, would be illegal. "We had reason to believe he knew how to make a firearms silencer using a toilet paper roll," said ATF agent Frank Samson, who claimed that todays grocery stores are a "haven for psychos in the toilet paper/paper towel section." The ATF agents raided the one story house shortly after noon today, originally posing as Girl Scouts to gain entry. "I didn't think they looked like Girl Scouts," said Dawn Mills in a telephone interview this evening, "I was a Girl Scout. A lot of Girl Scouts were friends of mine. Let me tell you, they were no Girl Scouts." The ATF agents did not use real firearms in the raid today, instead they used paintball marker guns. The paintball guns shoot non-lethal paint pellets instead of real bullets. The paint pellets break upon impact with objects or people, leaving a mark. The shooter then calls the opponent "out." The use of non-lethal paintball markers was adopted by ATF after the Waco incident. "We don't want to hurt anybody. We just want to break down their door and scare the piss out of them," said Samson, who stated, "we get off on the power and authority thing." But the Mills family had different ideas. "I was toying with the idea of building an automation system onto my Nightmare when they came through the door. The first guy shot at me but only got a bounce off my arm. He yelled for a paintcheck, but I yelled 'no break buddy' and lit him up," said William Mills. The paintfight continued in the Mills living room. "Boy can that guy work that pump," said Samson, "somebody should do something about those autotriggers, we're getting outgunned out there with our VM68s." Currently it is legal to own an autotrigger on a pump paintgun in California. Agent Samson pointed out that, while the pump gun William Mills was using is not technically a paintball "Assualt Marker," it can fire nearly as fast. "We're lucky that we got a squad into the Mills garage and got to their cache of semi-auto paintball guns before they did," he said. When asked what might have happened if Mr. Mills or his wife got to the Stingray assault-type semi-autos first, Samson replied that he and his men would have been "toast." Shortly after the shooting started one ATF agent was eliminated when trying to gain entry into the Mills bathroom. "I was on the toilet when I heard paintball guns going off in the living room," said Dawn Mills. "I was about to yell at Bill to knock it off when a big fat AFT agent tried to crash through that little bathroom window that is up high in the shower." Dawn Mills said she quickly eliminated him with the PGP pistol her husband had left in the bathroom earlier that day. "He's constantly tinkering," she said. The AFT agent plugged the window nicely, Mills said, and they have been passing the time together in the bathroom discussing their respective pet dogs. After several minutes of shooting in the living room, the AFT agents began to run out of CO2 in their VM68 Assault Markers. "We had to pull back outside the front door before that guy realized we were running out of air and jumped up and painted the rest of us," said Samson. The VM68 makes a very distinctive sound when it runs out of CO2, he explained. The AFT agents have currently set up a command center outside of the Mills home and are waiting for instructions from Washington. "I had my eyes closed the whole time," William Mills said, "because I didn't have my goggles on. That's what pisses me off more than anything--that they would shoot in here without everybody wearing eye protection." The IPPA, a paintball player's association, is looking into the safety of the raid. -- Steve Mitchell KD6BET TIP#168 steve_mitchell@csufresno.edu "Everything in this message may be wrong." / "Make love, not Perl code." If you domesticate a Yak, you don't say, "This is my Cow, a former Yak!" http://warpig.cati.csufresno.edu/steve.html