Public vs. Private

Nerf and foam dart blasters are always something that people will find ways of customizing beyond all belief, and why not, right? It's half the fun of screwing around with these things, you can make them look awesome. The problem is, however, not everyone is in to Nerf, and while most avid Nerf fans can spot a Nerf gun no matter what's done to it, the rest of the general public can't always. Take the TV show Terra Nova as an example for this, the gun props for that show are all Nerf guns, some modified, some just painted black. Now, Nerfers spotted it pretty quickly, but anyone else watching the show wouldn't have had a clue.

Prime example of what can be taken the wrong way in public.
...It's just a painted Nerf Recon.

Unfortunately, it's for this reason that sometimes we need to be a little careful about what we do, and think about how it looks in the eyes of the public. Someone running around with a bright yellow and orange toy gun is rather amusing to most people, however, recolour that blaster all black and suit that someone up in a set of cams and a Nerf tactical vest and they're going to create serious terrorism concerns and probably have a police officer or 5 pointing something much less harmless than a Nerf gun at them in less than a few minutes.  Most public Nerf wars in Australia (actually, all that I know of) ban any blaster painted in military or realistic colours, even tan and desert camo paints. Basically if it's not blatantly obvious that you're not a terror threat, you'll need to re-think your setup. I do agree with this completely, I'd sure hate it if I was a war organizer and it got shut down thanks to an old lady freaking out over someone rocking up with a blaster that looked like some kind of anti-material sniper rifle.

This, however is unlikely to get you in trouble.
...Unless you're firing Max Force pellets at non-players.

But don't get upset yet! There's nothing wrong with having you're own wars on private property, so long as you inform your neighbors that you're not a crazy firearm wielding nutter and are actually just using painted toy guns, they probably won't call in the federal police to deal with you and your friends. It might also be a good idea to set no-go zones, in the case that someone passing by and unaware of the foam warfare event spots half a dozen pseudo-terrorists in someone's yard. The private wars I attend are held on a fairly large lot of land which does have a main road nearby, so as a general rule, anywhere within sight of the road is a no-go zone, back behind the treeline is our border of action. There hasn't been any issues to date, and we get to suit up and paint our blasters however we like. So I guess there are advantages and disadvantages to attending private wars or public wars. Private could be more difficult to secure a venue and attendees but pick the right place and you can do it how you want, while  public is usually well organised but you're limited in the type and colour of gear you can bring. If you do both, perhaps have blasters set up for both. I have 2 Nitefinders, both modded exactly the same internally, but externally one looks like a rifle (The NiteSniper), the other is a standard whiteout series exterior. Likewise I intend to paint another one of my blasters in dark colours, but not until I have another to stay stock-coloured. I guess Bazookafied's words on the last post on this blog are good ones to keep in mind: "Don't get tazed, bro!".