Air Soft question?

[Miller John]

ive been hearing about these air soft guns form my friends. ive seen them in catalogs. are they worth it for just messing around like target shooting in the backyard? the price for a pistol in the cheeper than dirt catalog looks too good to be true. will a airsoft pistol shoot only the plastic BB's or can they shoot the regular lead ones that you would use in a daisy bb rifle.

[Briman]

They are fun but they aren't very accurate.
I have one and its realisticly weighted and balanced. I use it for practicing my presentation skills and for making the first shot out of a holster. They have a bit of umph behind the plastic pellets- enough to puncture a paper target at about 15 feet or so, but are wildly inaccurate especially beyond that distance as the pellets curve all over the place.

They are not copatible with BBs- they fire 5mm plastic pellets (IIRC), and BBs are around 4.5mm.

The cheap airsoft have to be cocked by hand with every shot, ,like ht eone I have. More expensive ones run on batteries and can fire in semi-auto and even full auto modes- some of these are as expensive as the real semiauto firearm they replicate!