Since paintball was invented, the equipment used in this sport has evolved quite rapidly. Paintball guns started as manually cocked, single-shot, hand-held pistols. The old versions only had an ammo capacity of 10 balls but now, there are paintball guns that are can shoot over 200 balls. These new generation weapons have turned into pneumatically cocked, electronically-controlled and programmable shot guns.

The earliest paintball guns were actually designed for the forestry service for use in marking trees. Then, performance and efficiency were not issues. But when someone found out how fun it is to shoot other people with paintball guns, performance suddenly became quite important.