Why you should learn to shoot with Real Caps

So as already mentioned, we use real capacity magazines for both our events and training sessions when it comes to doing Airsoft.

To be more precise, in our case that means 30 rounds for assault rifles which puts us into a very small group of players that do this.

To be more specific, when we talk about drum mags in Airsoft we’re talking about 2000 to 5000 rounds compared to the 210 rounds we individually carry with our 7 magazines. These amounts of shots doesn’t only make everything very unrealistic in our eyes, but also becomes somewhat ridiculous.

This makes us think the sport has nothing to do with skills anymore these days, but more about how much you’re willing to spend on ammunition. Which is off-course something the manufactures love to see.

The Airsoft industry is developing itself towards more and more shooting at a faster and faster rate of fire which is all awesome to see on a technical level, because we’re pushing the limits of what these guns are capable off.

To be fair, this may be one of the reasons that gives our already quite “controversial sport” a bad image to the outside world.

It’s even getting so ridiculous these days that some people who entered the sport for more realism which was the big difference compared to Paintball are actually quitting Airsoft and that’s not a good thing.

Besides that, we’re also seeing an image of people wanting to be a one man army somehow. We sure think this has to do with the image shown on social media these days by some famous players out there that take down opponents after opponents and can’t seem to stop making killstreaks.

We know there are plenty of ways to make it look like you’re invincible to the viewer, because we’re doing editing ourselves.

But besides that, you can also question yourself: Would this guy survive that long or take down that many opponents if he suddenly needed to reload? Well, we can give you the answer easily and it is a big “NO”.

We have been using our real caps for 8 months now of the total 3 years we’re doing this sport and our findings are, let’s say quite impressive. We can definitely say that we’ve learned more in the last 8 months by doing this than the 2 full years before that.

To start off with, we have a much better awareness of our mag capacity and thus know when they’re empty. And it’s not like we’re counting our shots, but it’s more of a subconscious awareness you develop by using them. The thing however is, you do lose that awareness when going back to other higher cap magazines and that’s one of the reasons we stick with these.

Besides that, we’re also more careful with our shots and force ourselves to go single shot most of the time and aim properly. This made us become more aware of what we can, what our guns can and what the effective ranges of our guns are. And guys 90 meters with a 350 fps AEG is bullshit! In fact we would be very impressed if you could get 50 meters effectively out of a basic gun, otherwise you don’t have an idea when it comes to distances.

We’ve also forced ourselves in some way to act more in a tactical way and work as a team. The fact is, a team is always important in a force on force activity. Only thing is, most people don’t realize that, but being limited on ammo is a huge eye opener. Because this suddenly makes you think like: “Holy sh*t I can’t do this on my own, I need the guys next to me to pull this off.”

Also the adaptation of our gear to improve speed and such are things you start to work on. An example of that, is our mod to turn a regular bungee retained mag pouch into a fast mag pouch with enough tension to firmly hold your mags. (Link to blog in picture.)

Another thing where opinions are mostly divided is the “Bang Rule”. Which just so you know, we’re personally not a fan of, because it is commonly being misused and you cannot properly do CQB with it. And the fact is, it’s a contact sport so getting hit is part of it whether it’s from far ahead or up close. However we do get why this rule has been brought to life and that primarily has to do with safety. Because once someone accidentally pulls that trigger and shoots at a ridiculous rate of fire you can expect a nasty surprise. And being limited in your mag capacity would already be part of the solution to not need a “Bang Rule”.

Possibly one of the biggest advantages we experienced is the fact that you tremendously save money on ammunition which gives you the ability to spend that money on much better gear and accessories. You might need to get new real-cap mags which cost you money, but you save a lot when not shooting that much. And that’s not only for BBs but also for the wear and tear on your gun’s internals.

To make a small comparison, we know of people that shoot a bag of BBs on a single day of Airsoft. That’s about 3000 shots on a single day. We however can both do about 3 full skirm days with 1 single bag of BBs.