The Unforeseen Dangers of Nerf Guns

By: Bryn Heikes                                                                                                                                                                                      

It all started with a handful of engineering majors in the MakerHub.

The group was led by Engineering major Isaac Barnes, who has been immersed in the Nerf world for almost eight years. “One of my hobbies had been modifying and tinkering with Nerf blasters and little dart guns since like early 2013,” Barnes said. “I got here on campus and thought, ‘Maybe other people might be interested in this too.’ We just kind of got together as freshmen just kind of building things and playing around a little bit.” It’s called nerf modding, and with the right tweaks you can make a standard Nerf gun shoot with twice the power. 

“Your standard Nerf gun shoots about 70 feet per second. But, if you put a bigger spring in it, or make the barrel longer, you can increase the performance and shoot something like 200 f/s,” said member James Marcelia. “We’re kind of all about, ‘Take it apart, make it better!’” Armed with these new and improved Nerfs, the crew launched a series of week-long wars. 

“It was basically always on, the only safe spaces were academic buildings and the Bon, but other than that it was a free for all.” Marciella said. “After a while we stopped doing those events, because it’s a little much sometimes to be always ducking through doorways and stuff.”

One afternoon, in the midst of a battle, club member Joseph Wolfe was in the wrong place at the wrong time. “There was this guy up on the third story of the suites, and I heard him up above. I look up, and he shoots me right in the left eye. I don’t think I even had time to blink, my eye was probably directly open.” said Wolfe.

After initially losing all vision in his left eye, Wolfe has since made several visits to opthalmologists at OHSU and is now on the road to recovery. “When you’re aiming at a human, the eye is pretty small.” Marciella said. “But if you mess around enough, one dart will eventually hit someone’s eye. It just so happened to be [Joseph’s] eye.” 

He added, “Safety glasses are now mandatory.” This year, the Nerf club is taking a more sustainable approach, meeting every Saturday afternoon. “We’re all about having fun and connecting through this medium where we can both tinker with things and then go play together,” Barnes added. “It’s a great way to relax after studying.” 

For those interested in joining the GFU Nerf Club, they meet every Saturday at 11:30am by the Lemmons Center. Or, follow them on Instagram at gfu_nerf.