re: My son wants an airsoft rifle for his birthday...what is exactly the point?

+1 to everything here. I had tons of fun with my airsoft guns during neighborhood wars. The funnest houses were the ones with tree houses since it's like a sniper post.

Chicken, it's a great start to teach your kid the basics of handling a firearm and firearm safety. Of course you regularly break the second rule of firearm safety (never point the muzzle at anything you aren't willing to destroy) but you can still teach him about trigger finger discipline and handling in general.

A few tips:

1. Get the white BBs rather than the yellow ones. They are heavier and fly a bit straighter even though someone mentioned that the BBs will still curve a bit. This is from the "pop-up" system of the gun that puts backspin on the BB. Some guns have it, some don't.

2. Do not remove or paint over the orange tip. As a matter of fact, get a gun that has a lot of visible orange or do a little painting yourself. I remember some of the guns I used as a kid looked extremely realistic with no orange at all and in the modern day would scare some people.

3. As others mentioned too, get eye protection, preferably a full paintball face mask so they don't catch a BB in the nose or ears along with the eyes.

4. Let him have a blast. Some of my favorite memories from my first neighborhood were aisoft wars.