Monday, July 21, 2008 Rama: An airsoft invasion By Karlon N. Rama Stage Five
THE annual Defense and Sporting Arms Show, or simply the gun show, is in full blast in Manila.
Only, report John Melendres and Dr. Manny Barcenas, the guns that burn powder and actually go boom seem to have been overrun by those that run on batteries and go pop—Electric Airsoft Guns—in the battle for the display stands.
Not that this is a bad thing.
Unfortunately, Doc. Manny and John, together with fellow army reservist Andy Chua and Kamagong Gun Club’s Tyrone Mercader, are in Manila to check out… well, real guns… So I empathize with them.
Had I been in their shoes, traveling all the way to Manila as they did, I’d be frustrated too.
I should have been with them. We made plans to go together as early as two months back. But I got accepted to a German-funded journalism training program in Jakarta that begins late this week, one that I applied for but didn’t expect to get.
And taking time off to attend the gun show then leaving the office again for the training the week after just doesn’t seem fair to the bosses.
Nevertheless, I’m happy that airsoft, a hobby I briefly took in early 2000, is growing by leaps and bounds; so much so that large tournaments, attended by teams sometimes as large as platoons, are being held almost on a monthly scale.
During our time, we contended ourselves with weekend skirmishes, mostly at the Family Park in Talamban.
Our team would divide itself into two groups, aggressor and defender, with the aggressor trying to wipe the defender out while making sure it doesn’t get outflanked and become the hunted.
And to cap the day would be a game of speedball. The opposing sides would begin in pre-marked areas of an open field and, upon start signal, would rush at each other in a hail of plastic pellets. Hooyah!
Full-blown team-versus-team matches were a rarity, at least for Cebu, back then. We were lucky if one was organized in a year. And even then, one could see the same faces year after year.
This was primarily because there weren’t so many airsoft teams around to begin with.
During my days, there was only Team EMC, to whose membership roster I hope I have not been delisted, Quench, who later renamed themselves the Trident Knights, and ASG.
Team EMC is the group behind the annual Operation Southern Cross, a full-blown military simulation challenge that attracts not only the hobbyists but official contingents from the police and the military as well.
It was economics that held airsoft down. And it is economics that’s propping it up now.
In 2000 or thereabouts, airsoft rifles cost upwards of P20,000 in stock condition. And that prohibitive price does not yet include batteries and high-capacity magazines and protective wear.
The airsoft guns, in those days, all came by way of Japan.
Importation and distribution—absolutely illegal because of a Marcos-era ban on replica guns—was being done by handful of suppliers who, in turn, made a killing out of the monopoly.
The favored brand was Tokyo Marui. Mine was an AKSU 74 I had bought second-hand from Bruce Chiong, son of Crusade Against Violence-Visayas president Thelma Chiong.
The popular model was the M4, a short variant of the M16, and the MP5.
The recent inflow (deluge, more like it) of airsoft guns from China, a fully working unit costing less than P10,000 on average but could already give Tokyo Marui a run for its money, changed the airsoft scene dramatically.
With the price, the average young professional can afford one. And the unbelievable abundance of supply insures that one can get the best price for the unit one wishes to buy.
And, indeed, the market reacted.
People began gearing up and organizing their own teams. It didn’t take long for federations to form and for tournaments and bivouacs to get organized.
What we have now, in the fullest sense, an airsoft invasion.
