Do You Practice With Air Soft Guns

I have a friend who trains religiously with air soft. Do you guys recommend this? He does, I haven't taken the plunge on this one yet. May have to, or not, can't decide. It sounds like fun times, but I don't know how much I would trust them as a training aide.
 
Any practice you can get will help, and airsoft definately counts. I wish the recoil on those things was a little more realistic, but it does help in other ways if you can find an airsoft gun with similar weight and balance to your normal weapon. I also consider any time spent on a paintball field as shoot-on-the-move and tactical practice as well, since its the closest thing you're going to get to being shot at with real bullets.
 
Perhaps it's just me, but I don't see what benefit you get from training with an Airsoft rifle/pistol. An Airsoft pistol will feel different in your hands, will have different sights and POI, and can't duplicate the noise and muzzle flash of an actual firearm. I don't see what advantage it possesses over training with an unloaded weapon.
 
CSMSSS, the advantage of training with airsoft is in force on force scenarios. It allows you to safely practice close combat drills that you can't do with live ammo for obvious reasons. I used to consider airsoft a childs toy until I went to a class that used it in FOF. It is a very eye opening experience and gives you a pretty good idea of what tactics will get you shot and which ones will get you out of the line of fire.
 
I agree Airsoft would be good for COMBAT TACTICS, but in a home defense situation there really aren't any 'tactics' per se, from all the dozens of stories I've read about them. The only tactics I've read about were that the homeowner 1) had a gun and 2) fired it at the intruders. 99.99% of all attacks are criminals looking for an easy score. Once the guns start blazing the criminals leave very quickly.

That said, if you think you're going to be in a situation where armed dudes are going to break into your place with you there and they will know you are armed and are going to do it anyway, then you might need some tactics. But if you're involved in a situation where that might happen I'd hope you'd have the cash to spend on a few bodyguards and their weaponry and/or other home defense stuff.

For the obvious reasons IMHO Airsoft are not good for standard home defense situations because they do not replicate the recoil, the DEAFENING SOUND, the acrid smell and possible smoky haze of actually firing a weapon indoors.
 
Doggieman, I have to agree and disagree with you at the same time. You are right in that very few homeowners deploy any real tactics per say. I would argue that the reason for this is that they have no training. I would also argue that airsoft is a good training tool in that it gets you as close to the real thing as is practical with the obvious household restraints. I don't know of too many people who are going to shoot live ammo or even simunitions off inside their living room in the interest of training. Using your logic MILES gear used by the military is worthless. The airsoft does a very good job of showing you how to draw, move, search, avoid taking hits, and how to get on target.
 
all's I'm saying is that sort of tactical training for homeowners is almost completely unnecessary. If you want to do it, then great. I think the money would be better spent, for most people, for range ammo. The firing of a real gun in an artificial environment is IMHO better than the firing of an unreal gun in your home for training purposes.

If you really really want to practice "sweeping" your house or whatever, I believe you could do so with your unloaded real gun. Shooting little plastic pellets doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me, because what you're really going to have to deal with is not various guys moving around the house shooting at you from behind cover while you do commando rolls behind the bidet, etc., , but the simple fact that you're going to have to 1) get one of your guns in a hurry 2) possibly shoot the gun indoors and 3) watch the bad guys run like the Keystone Kops back to where they came from.
 
can anyone tell me how loud the electric and gas airsoft guns are? I picked up a cheapo spring piston pistol and it's easily quiet enough that I don't bug the neighbors. I've seen a few AEG videos on youtube though that make it seem like it's about as loud as my paintball gun. That would definitely too loud for hitting my Crosman gel dartboard target at 2am like I can now.
 
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