Back in the day, paintball was played by just throwing paintballs at each other. Then they started using pistols that farmers used to mark trees and livestock. Today, the creation of military replica paintball rifles made paintball a more tactical and strategic game instead of the usual short matches. These paintball rifles look like the real thing and are frequently used for tactical training exercises by law enforcement.

Paintball rifles have different types of firing mechanisms. Rifles with a pump action mechanism need to be manually cocked after every shot. The semi-automatic rifle has an automatic cycle bolt that loads the paintball into the chamber after every shot. This frees the user from manually pumping the rifle. Fully automatic rifles continually feed the paintball into the chamber and fire the charges as long as the trigger is pressed, much like machine guns. Some rifles also have a ramping mode, where the gun changes from semi to fully automatic when the trigger is pulled at a specific rate.