A rapper’s call to resolve conflict with paintball wars is being hailed as a way to tackle gun violence. But some have turned deadly

In videos pouring on to social media from cities across the US, young men are seen brandishing weapons, calling out rivals and firing as people scatter down blocks and around buildings. The point of it all? Gun violence prevention, according to the people involved.

The weapons fire paintballs and participants say it’s a way of settling feuds and disagreements that might otherwise have led to real gunfire.

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“In this generation everybody’s fascinated with guns,” said Jarret McClain, a paintballer in Durham, North Carolina. “But if you got paintball guns and you know nobody can get hurt and it won’t cause nobody’s family to cry, at the end of the day it becomes fun shooting at people.”

McClain credits the Atlanta rapper 21 Savage with sparking the recent wave of interest in paintball after he posted a number of videos to social media in early April calling for “guns down, paintballs up” as an alternative to gun violence. McClain said it’s been effective too, and that his crew had already settled three separate vendettas with other groups through paintball.

“These dudes we’ve been feuding with for like one or two years, all of the sudden they just wanna squash the beef and have a paintball war,” said McClain, an aspiring rapper who added that he was no stranger to real firearms.

Besides Atlanta and Durham, the trend has caught on in Detroit, Milwaukee and Greensboro, North Carolina, as well. Typically small groups and cliques of young men target one another, riding in vehicles and taunting rivals in social media posts on Instagram and Snapchat. The threats are often menacing, appropriating language from more serious threats of violence, but the actual battles are mostly approached as fun. In many of the paintball war videos that now litter YouTube, participants can be heard laughing and joking throughout.

These dudes we’ve been feuding with, all of the sudden they just wanna squash the beef and have a paintball war Jarret McClain

But not everyone is laughing. In a Monday press conference, Sgt Melissa Franckowiak of the Milwaukee police department said that her department had seen 65 incidents in just a three-day span last weekend. “It’s kind of morphed into something other than what [21 Savage] anticipated, I think, and now these kids have been shooting unsuspecting citizens as opposed to their friends in these paintball wars.”

A handful of Milwaukee residents told the Guardian they had first-hand experience of these kinds of random incidents, including Theresa Hall who said her daughter was struck while walking to her grandparents house over the weekend. “She wasn’t injured but I’m pretty sure if this keeps happening someone will be,” Hall said.

Paintball “markers”, which often look like and are referred to as “guns” use compressed gas to propel gelatin capsules filled with dye out of the barrel. The devices have been popular for battle-simulation based games since the 1980s but are generally illegal to use in public areas. Without proper protection, paintball impacts can cause bruising, welts, and can cause serious injuries to the face and eyes.

Authorities had mostly been treating the street battles as a nuisance, but are growing concerned that its anti-gun violence intentions can backfire, as it appears to have in at least two cases over the past month.

Milwaukee Police (@MilwaukeePolice) MPD is warning citizens following a recent increase in paintball shootings. Since late last week, MPD has responded to dozens of calls. News reports highlight similar incidents across the country. Anyone with information can call MPD at 414-935-7360. https://t.co/HuanY3QEC4 pic.twitter.com/1FORuPMH18

In Atlanta on 1 April, three year old T’Rhigi Diggs was killed by a stray bullet after a 15-year-old allegedly opened fire at a car that had peppered him and others in a parking lot with paintballs. The teen, Christopher Cullins, was arrested 10 days later from his middle school and charged as an adult with murder. According to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, 21 Savage, though he personally had nothing to do with the case, happened to be a friend of T’Rhigi’s family and paid for the funeral.

Then in Greensboro, North Carolina, on 20 April, 19-year-old Zyquarius Bradley was shot and killed in an incident that authorities “strongly believe” was tied to paintball wars. Just hours before Bradley was found shot, police had confiscated paintball guns and ammo from Bradley, whose car was splattered with paint the night of the homicide. No arrests have been made in the killing.

The police captain, Nathaniel Davis, said the department was going to ramp up enforcement around paintball-related crimes. “This is not safe and this is not something that’s acceptable,” Davis told a local news station.

Last week Detroit’s police chief, James Craig, called the paintball campaign “well-intentioned but misguided”. Police there have made at least six arrests in connection with paintball activity and said that they had taken 95 related calls for service over the course of the week.

“Any effort to reduce violence in our city or any city around the country we appreciate,” Craig said, “but having paintball wars across the city is not the way to do it.”

One of Craig’s main concerns is how similar some paintball guns look to real semi-automatic weapons, especially those that feature detached air canisters. The concern was echoed by Franckowiak in Minneapolis.

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“If you’re doing it to an unsuspecting citizen,” he said, “and they’re not aware that it’s a paintball gun, and it happens to be a [conceal carry permit holder] or a police officer … there is a potential for you being shot and possibly killed.”

McClain said point blank that he was not worried about his next paintball weapons (his last two were recently seized by police) being mistaken for real guns. As for the concerns of citizens and law enforcement, he said he understood them and thought players just needed to be more discerning.

“The people who are involved in the paintball shooting stuff, they should know there’s boundaries,” McClain said. “If y’all wanna have a war, go into the woods.”