It doesn't even seem physically possible. Most good Airsoft are made of aluminum and other light metals. including the barrel, which isn't even big enough for a .22LR to fit through. And if you could chamber a round, you'd need to get a bolt assemble, another trigger piece and even then there's a possibility of the round exploding inside this thing. It's just not designed to shoot real bullets.

My Boyi M4 is a lower-end airgun (cost me a around $70 with shipping) and it has a steel barrel, receiver sight rail, and rear sight carry handle, but the rest of it is plastic and you can't open up the receiver to get to the guts.

I would imagine this fear of airsoft guns converted to real guns is drawn from some airsoft guns being converted as such from real guns (the local army surplus has a number of AR-15 type airsoft rifles that are converted from real rifles) and the illogical theory that they can somehow be converted back to live fire.

My Classic Army M4 costs almost 300. Full metal body, RIS and a crane stock, but those are aftermarket things I got for it. Originally it looks like a factory carbine. You can take it apart just like a real M4, but once you do, the insides don't have possible spaces to store a real bolt and buffer tube or charging handle.

seriously? $300 fucking dollars? You are getting ripped off

Nowadays, 300 for a stock rifle is a rip. Prices are a lot lower than they were 4 years ago when I bought it. The market's different. A classic army rifle of the same type now is half the price it was when I entered college a few years back. And that was before I did some work on it. It's worth a couple hundred more today than it did before.

Airsoft is expensive. You look up prices for the top models, they will cost you to play. Otherwise go settle with Walmart $30 pieces of crap.

Or you could buy a $60 dollar bolt action spring gun and kick some ass

If you want to get your ass kicked by the guys with gas blow back or electric automatic rifles. I was the kind of guy that goes full camo, vests, dump pouches, 10 magazines and a sidearm with 2 extra mags for that. And I did use my sidearm every so often, or toss it to a buddy who's out of ammo and doesn't have one.

During my heyday in the team I was in, we would have a set of woodland and desert camo for the different seasons and that includes a boonie or a helmet. We have to get good boots to avoid twisting ankle, gloves, etc. That alone would cost you over 100.

My team in college consists of 2 ROTC guys who are training to be in the Marines, and one working out to be a cop. Our team leader was a foreign exchange student who was in the British paratroopers. We used to make jokes about him being our Captain Price from Call of Duty.

And we would run the same rifle systems so that we can share magazines during skirmishes. It started out with some of us using M4/M16 platforms, and G3s. One guy had an L85A1 and another an L86, Then we all changed to M4 platforms and one guy had a SAW. Depending on how many of the team goes to play, at least one of us has an M203 attached We would have one guy who also carries a sniper rifle, but eventually he stop bringing it because there is never a moment to use it. Airsoft is too fast for sniping.

We have fun, but we don't go running around the forest in jeans and a Hawaiian t-shirt. We trained, work out, party. It was like any sport to us. Sure, we played with and against the occasional guy who just runs around being an idiot Rambo with his overpriced system. To us, over 1,000 is absurdly expensive. And then we play against soldiers, police and guys who are just better. As I said it's fun and intense.

These are some trailers that feature the biggest Airsoft operation in the country with Col. Danny McKnight present.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIRpdTYj_JA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Na4PLW7-oE

I didn't play that often, but I always found sidearms to be too unwieldy. Maybe I just needed a better holster, but I found that it was too hard to run around with my WA Beretta 92FS bouncing around on my right thigh.

I always went in light as possible - BDUs, cheap Pantac vest and PASGT helmet replica, stock Tokyo MP5A3 with Surefire grip (sometimes my M16A2), eight mags (which I usually carried in pouches across my vest and in my belt), pretty much nothing else. My first two skirmishes ever, I would carry my Beretta in a cheap thigh holster I bought at a gun show, but eventually decided it wasn't worth the weight.

I usually got killed before I could use it, anyway. I discovered pretty quickly that urban Tigerstripe BDUs made me too visible in the woods when there are a lot of thick (brown) trees around and not enough foliage. :D

Whenever I used to play, it was a bunch of dudes with spring pistols (occasionally a pump gun) wearing jeans and some sort of jacket

Well at first I used a thigh holster because it was a gift, but it was awkward for me the first few times. It really depends what kind of pistol you had. If it's too heavy, or if you didn't strap on tight, it'll bounce around. Most of the time, I rarely even pull out my pistol. On the rare occasion that we go indoors, I would take it out.