A Call for Marker Control

According to the medical journal Pediatrics, the number of eye injuries treated in emergency rooms caused by paintball accidents more than doubled from 545 in 1998 to 1,200 in 2000.

Played by about 10 million people at more than 2,500 sites across the country, the sport of paintball has become increasingly popular in recent years. But all over the U.S.A., kids are taking paintball guns — er, make that paintball “markers” as our friends at Brass Eagle Inc. of Bentonville always insist — to the streets for a little practical joking.

The results have been devastating for many people who have lost vision in one eye because someone shot them with a paintball — a marble-sized gelatin capsule of water soluble paint that can travel at 300 feet per second.

Paintball companies strongly encourage customers to wear protective masks or goggles while playing war games with paintball guns. But kids have a tendency to be kids.

The folks at Brass Eagle once told us to call the paintball-shooting contraptions “markers” because they figured farmers were buying them to “mark” cattle. We would like to see some numbers on how many farmers are buying the products for that purpose.

Brass Eagle was sold to K2 Inc. of Carlsbad, Calif., last year in a $77.8 million deal. Brass Eagle, now a wholly owned subsidiary of K2, still makes paintball products in Bentonville.