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My only concern with the reenactment angle is that 99% of the games we play, even if they have a historically-themed roleplay element, are about as much reenactment as speedball is. Face it, we may be "taking over the beaches of Normandy" but honestly, is that what people are really there for? No. I wouldn't want us to possibly be seen as taking extreme liberties with the definition of reenactment simply to fit a perceived ulterior motive.
The Manitoba Airsoft Association's standpoint is that this is a SPORT. The phrase we've used for years which has always worked is "like paintball." Like it or not the two sports are identical in practice - using a gun to shoot projectiles at other players in order to tag them out. One has received a lot more commercial success because neon jerseys and "markers" are more palatable to soccermoms. As mentioned above they were more milsim when they first got started and only enjoyed this commercial success after dropping that aspect for a while. Milsim is finally working its way back into paintball now.
The reenactment idea certainly has merit although I just don't think it's fair to misrepresent what we do. Reenactment is more niche than airsoft is and I question how much value we could put into that as a parallel. It would be awful hard to swallow that thousands of teens and young adults are suddenly interested in preserving the history of famous battles and need four figures worth of camouflage, guns, and accessories to do it.
The MAA will continue pushing this as a sporting event, and hopefully our registration as a sporting organization will help with that. I know some people have asked for more information on what we've done and I'd love to provide that, but I want to make sure it's presented in a clear and finished manner. We are still working on establishing certain things and making a lot of it up as we go along but hopefully within the next few weeks we'll have more nailed down that we can present to the community.
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