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In Milwaukee, cops responded to 65 reports of folks getting hit with paintballs in the last week, according to the Journal Sentinel. Meanwhile, cops in Detroit received 95 paintball-related calls over just one week, and police in Charlotte, North Carolina, have gotten more than 150 calls since January. Cops in Atlanta confiscated more than 7,500 paintball rounds and nine guns when they broke up a war earlier this month.
According to police, the whole fiasco began with none other than 21 Savage, who's credited with starting what's known as "paintballs up, guns down." Apparently, the idea is to cut back on gun violence by encouraging people to mess around with paintball guns insteadābut, obviously, it's not working out all that great. Aside from all the houses and cars getting covered in paint, some people are actually getting injuredāand according to the cops, the wars might have claimed at least two lives.
"He started the movement in an effort to stop the shootings in the inner cities,ā Melissa Franckowiak, a sergeant with the Milwaukee Police Department, said at a news conference Monday. "Itās kind of morphed into something other than what he anticipated, I think. Now these kids have been shooting unsuspecting citizens as opposed to their friends during these paintball wars."
In early April, a group of paintballers unloaded on a 15-year-old kid at an Atlanta gas station, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Ticked off and covered in paint, he allegedly grabbed a real handgun and fired at the cars that had ambushed himāaccidentally striking and killing a three-year-old inside. (21 Savage ended up paying for the funeral.) A few weeks later, police found a 19-year-old in Greensboro shot to death in a car that was splattered with paint, in what police claim was a killing connected to the city's paintball war, FOX 8 reports.
It's not entirely clear if 21 Savage actually coined the phrase "paintballs up, guns down," but he's been flooding social media with footage of himself shooting paintball guns for weeks. One day, he'll be driving around with a car full of the things; the next, he's apparently unloading on Blac Chyna's boyfriend's car, or waging an all-out paintball war outside a club.
Cops across the country have started to crack down on the wars, making at least six arrests in Detroit, four in Charlotte, and issuing a citywide warning in Milwaukee to put a stop to the fights.
