Going the RE-ENACTOR way.

[Goldman]

Originally Posted by mcguyver

You have to look at this in the context of the current mindset of our government and the law. Guys with antique muzzle loaders or swords playing war is not a very threatening thing. Guys running around with current military patterns carrying what appears to be illegal assault rifles, well, you don't need to be a genius to figure that out.

Now Skruface has a good idea. You can't have a replica of a muzzle loader. It is exempt from the law on both real and replica grounds.

Now tell me, how would you go about getting either government approval or as some suggest funding to use illegal replicas? I can tell you for 101% certainty that you will get neither. Now, if you could prove it falls on grounds of remembering our historical events (ie promoting Canadian culture), perhaps you have a chance. But what realistic bureaucrat will approve of a bunch of white guys re-enacting "Black Hawk Down" in southern Ontario. You'd need to have alot of Somalians involved, find a desert setting, etc. to even have a hope.

But you may have a chance with the Riel Rebellion, or the Plains of Abraham battle perhaps. But that's not possible or even likely with guys in MARPAT or Cadpat using MP5's or M4's.

I mean, c'mon!!

Re-enactments happen quite alot in the U.S.. Look at what they do and see how it fits with what you guys are proposing. Then add in that their re-enactments would never be approved by our useless government, then you'll see what you're up against and tailor your strategy accordingly.

Well there is always WW2, or peace-keeping operations...

[redhawk_six]

Airsoft is nothing like reenacting, END OF STORY. Hate to ruin your fun, but there it is. Nothing good can come from us trying to call ourselves reenactors. For one, it will greatly offend real reenactors and history buffs, making our sport even further of an outcast sport within the military enthusiast community. And if a reporter ever looked up the deffinition of reenacting, do you think they'd paint us in a positive light? Hell no. They'd potray us badly, as people with something to hide, as people who can only get away with playing our sport by trying to pass ourselves off as reenactors. The bottom line is, because of the nature of our sport, we can never be truthfully called reenactors. Period. Argue all you want but thats the truth.

Read the deffinition of reenacting if you dont believe me. Then tell me how airsoft could possibly be considered that.
http://www.answers.com/reenacting&r=67
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reenactment

Now, you want to change the name of the sport and become more pc, more public friendly, great. But not to reenacting.

Modern Military Simulation would work fine. It'd achive the same goals without the risk of pissing people off.

[Affliction]

It just takes one or two people and everyone jumps on the "WOOT GREAT IDEA!" bandwagon.

Airsoft is hardly re-enacting as most events have artificially created situations (and sometimes no storyline at all). A more people-friendly marketing fashion would be to portray Airsoft as another spot just like paint-ball.

Anyways, just to remind you all (who have since forgotten...) Our sport is at risk of a ban NOT because the sport is intimidating (as well as the name)--It is because dim-witted kids are wielding them in public. It doesn't matter what we call ourselves... replica weapons will be banned because of foolish people (Whether we call ourself Airsoft players or re-enacters is irrelevant).

If you haven't noticed yet, the police are using Airsoft guns as a scapegoat for the cause of many of their problems. The problem is the stupid people wielding them in public that THEY CHOOSE NOT TO ARREST.

Lets say this idea passes and we brand ourselves as re-enactors.
You've pretty much killed off all chances of outside people becoming interested in our SPORT. People are much more interested in trying a new SPORT than anything with "re-enact" in the name.

I dis-approve of this thread.
-VM

[SF]

In case you don't notice, pretty much everything suggested here has already been practiced by a specific group on ASC for some time. It is called In Country. Go talk to Meat/Bravo Six/LT or whatever he likes to be called and look at their pictures. That's undoubtedly re-enactment to the T.

[Bravo One-Six]

Originally Posted by redhawk_six

Airsoft is nothing like reenacting, END OF STORY. Hate to ruin your fun, but there it is. Nothing good can come from us trying to call ourselves reenactors. For one, it will greatly offend real reenactors and history buffs, making our sport even further of an outcast sport within the military enthusiast community. And if a reporter ever looked up the deffinition of reenacting, do you think they'd paint us in a positive light? Hell no. They'd potray us badly, as people with something to hide, as people who can only get away with playing our sport by trying to pass ourselves off as reenactors. The bottom line is, because of the nature of our sport, we can never be truthfully called reenactors. Period. Argue all you want but thats the truth.

Read the deffinition of reenacting if you dont believe me. Then tell me how airsoft could possibly be considered that.
http://www.answers.com/reenacting&r=67
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reenactment

Now, you want to change the name of the sport and become more pc, more public friendly, great. But not to reenacting.

Modern Military Simulation would work fine. It'd achive the same goals without the risk of pissing people off.

SF said it before I could. What we've been doing with the In Country / Bravo Company group conforms exactly to what you're talking about. If you want to debate it you can try, but when you're using exact equipment, tactics, mindset, and language while carrying a load of shit you don't need to AND living as close as possible to the individuals involved in a specific historic event.. I'm pretty sure that qualifies. Ironically, it's exactly what most people look for in airsoft - a realistic authentic tactical experience. Anyways. Airsoft and reenacting mix just fine if it's done properly, and not half assed like most of us do.

[SF]

Originally Posted by Bravo One-Six

What we've been doing with the In Country / Bravo Company group conforms exactly to what you're talking about. If you want to debate it you can try, but when you're using exact equipment, tactics, mindset, and language while carrying a load of shit you don't need to AND living as close as possible to the individuals involved in a specific historic event.. I'm pretty sure that qualifies.

That's an affirmative except for one thing. All the commie VCs are white guys. They can't be all Russian advisers or former GIs crossed over to the other side, can they?

[thephenom]

Originally Posted by wikipedia

Historical reenactment is an activity in which participants recreate some aspects of a historical event or period. It may be a narrowly-defined time period, such as a specific war or other event, or it may be more broadly defined.

That's a pretty broad definition, and as long as we twist the storyline a bit on the milsim games, then it'll still fit the re-enactment definition.

Ok, there isn't much jungle warfare in Afganistan to be re-enacted in most place across Canada. But I mean the CDN Forces does enough peace keeping mission around the world that would have some jungle warfare that we can base our milsims around.

The gov't can't really say we're not re-enacting if we loosely base the game around these missions because that dis-credit the missions our forces take oversea at the same time. There isn't anything that prevents us in re-enacting relatively unknown events.

Also, I'm sure there are CDN Forces using weapons other than our standard issues, and I'm sure there are battles the CDN Forces might be in other uniforms other than our own. (Which would allow us to wear different BDUs and carry different loadouts, and also, a lot of time it's usually a joint mission, so we have even more choices.)

I still see it as going to work out unless something really concrete beats against it.

[Chubby]

This sounds like a cool idea. I'm up for it, sign me up if/when you get the ball rolling.

Just out of curiousity, would it work if we registered clubs/associations based on LARP (live action role play)?

[Greylocks]

A lot of folks here are questioning re-enacting of specific battles that have nothing to do with Canada.
I will point towards the Medieval folks, the 18th century people, and so on. They often do not re-enact actual battles.
They DO re-enact Tactics, Methods, Equipment use, Team actions.

We can re-enact Canadian troops, other countrie's troops, terrorists, operatives. That covers all the equipment and uniforms I can think of. We can also re-enact battles in other countries (Viet-Nam comes to mind and is already done).

We can do exactly the same and say we reproduce tactics, methods, and events such as "the people who rescued the Christian Hostages in Iraq". That is recent history, it happened, and AID WORKERS were saved.

Look at all the words I just used; we're 'studying' tactics that helped 'rescue innocent aid workers' and learning from it.

I could have said "We're doing a military simulation where we shoot unsuspecting guards to rescue personnel that were about to be decapitated. Us, the hostages and the guards about to decapitate were not harmed in the event because we use real looking machine guns."

What do you think would go down best? Is it so hard to change the words we use?

To those of you who dont know about the re-enactment world, I suggest you study a bit more on it. See what they do, how they do it, and most importantly how they appear in the media.

We can do the same thing IF we get our act together. If not, nothing will change. Me? I'll give it a shot and do my part. Re-enactment is a large definition, let's use it for our advantage. It's free.

[Greylocks]

Originally Posted by SF

That's an affirmative except for one thing. All the commie VCs are white guys. They can't be all Russian advisers or former GIs crossed over to the other side, can they?

For musketry groups, it's far from the truth to say that all the natives really are natives.
Again, we (yes I am a re-enactor) reproduce situations that happened or were likely to have happened using methods and tools/equipment that existed at the time where the event is set.
Airsoft games can be defined in exactly the same way. There are tons of modern battles, special ops and terrorism operations out there to be studied. We reproduce skirmishes at every game. We use appropriate uniforms and equipment that was/is in use at the time. Modern times, modern equipment.

We ALREADY do this stuff, we just need to change some wording and attitudes to get the ball rolling.

It becomes exactly the same except it does NOT sound threathening like the words military, weapons, guns, would sound.

To understand, think like a soccer mom. What would you rather hear about?

[Dracheous]

And even when you go to some "re-enactments" some things are not entirely perfect either. Like rubber insoles, or matches to light the fire, or paper to wipe your ass!

The idea of re-enacting something is simply trying to re-create an event or time period as close as one can. The point of which is to see what the people of that event or time went through, felt, thought, and so on. We DO try to do that with Airsoft. Because when we gear up, even if my BDU's don't match my team mates we are still emerging into a battle-type scenario in which we try to see what its like to be in an hostile environment.

Also there are ways we can't have our "re-enactments" for instance my team does not all share the same liking for period dress. I prefer modern day weaponry and gearing, I also am making myself customized gear to my liking and my game play. But that means I'm not under any certain flag, because our team considers ourselves mercenaries. We use what we find works best for us and work for the highest bidder, or who we choose to work for. That way none of us have to conform to the other and we can just use gear that works best for us. And mercs exist the world over, so its not based from any non-factual idea.

And not to mention like Greylocks said, we can also "re-enact" things that didn't actually happen, but things that are probable to have happen or TOO happen. Re-enacting isn't always about doing something thats already BEEN done to as close as we can re-create it. Sometimes there are "re-enactments" that take place to study the infamous "What-if?" scenario. Such scenarios are made to try and answer things like, "What would it have taken for the Red Coats to win here? or loose here?" And so on.


Confining it to the "definition" that wikipedia has is not very realistic, because things change. Such is our image needs to change some what. As a community, as a sport/hobby, as a game; the image just needs to change so that its not so imposing.

Re-enactment
Airsoft players in a World War II reenactment are guarding a piece of mock artillery. Note that while the player's uniform (with the exception of the safety goggles) is designed to resemble that of the time period, the SIG 552 he is holding is not.
Airsoft players in a World War II reenactment are guarding a piece of mock artillery. Note that while the player's uniform (with the exception of the safety goggles) is designed to resemble that of the time period, the SIG 552 he is holding is not.

On occasion, airsoft games will be played in which the structure and/or conditions are designed to emulate a specific real-world battle as a form of historical or modern reenactment, depending on the historical period. This type of play can vary from a simple skirmish emulating a small-scale battle (like that of Pegasus Bridge) to a full reenactment of the Battle of Mogadishu[1] or the Battle of the Bulge.

For earlier historical eras such as that of World War II, equipment restrictions may be imposed on players for some historical accuracy. This may include restricting players to the use of replica firearms that were available during the historical battle. To include players without the correct airsoft guns, organizers may set up rules restricting them to semi-automatic fire or restricting the amount of ammunition they may carry (to better simulate firearm performance of that era and ensure equal capability among players).

How closely the historically-based airsoft game replicates the historical battle is up to the game organizer. Sometimes a historic battle will merely be inspiration for the structure of a standard skirmish, while sometimes the players may be actual reenactors seeking another way to enjoy their hobby.

Also, if you search for a diffinition on "MilSim" you get nothing, however it does bring a link to Airsoft up on wikipedia. When you read this there is also a section right there on wikipedia that has a "re-enactment" tie to airsoft. And if you read the last part, which I bolded for you. It gives you exactly what we do, we base our games off of real or possibly real events in order to recreate it.

Wikipedia said you can and you can't all at the same time then I guess now didn't it?



EDIT: Here is the wikipedia link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft#MilSim

You can call it whatever you want. At the end of the day, a stroke of the Liberal pen can make it prohibited entirely, regardless of what you call it.

Put forth an argument that we're "re-enactors" and they'll counter that we don't need firing replica's to do so.

Fight the anti-gun movement and this problem takes care of itself in the process.

Sorry, but I just see this as window dressing.

Originally Posted by Endymion

Taking your proposed action Morbius, if in the end all that the window dressing does it buy some time while better adequately preparing for the fight, is this not better than not having said time at all?

Enlighten me. How does re-labelling the sport "re-enactment" buy anyone any time?

[Manmaries]

im pretty sure we're already re enacting

[Groombug]

I doubt the vast majority of the airsofting community would be willing to abide by the strict realism rules that are applied to In Country guys. Most just want to get their guns off and have a good time shooting each other.

Re-enactment would necessarily require strict adherence to a certain set of kit and weapon guidelines. Anything less would result in amateurish presentation and asshatry.

There are undoubtedly airsofters who try and follow a particular pattern, and there are those that are incredibly (and exhaustively so) successful. But I don't see a similar commitment to realism or the desire to make it a priority in the general airsofting population.