In my setup I use two arduinos. One for sending, the other for receiving.
This means that I can detect hits even while firing.
The problem is: Communication between the two arduinos is not implemented yet. I would like to use a serial connection. But then the connection between arduino and PC is dropped = no debugging = programming nightmare.

I'm seriously doubting wether I can program this without debugging.
So I'm considering a one arduino solution.

At this point I encountered the problems with IRlib, searched online, found your project and read up on the code. You use only one arduino, right ?
Does that work for you ?

66 samples per signal, let's say an average of 1000 per mark and space. I believe that this number is a multiple of the carrier frequency. So 38kHz times 66000. That's about two seconds per signal. That surely can't be right.

Did you ever experience "invulnerability" while shooting ?
Did you experiment with burst fire modes (they should make it even worse) ?

I'm trying to create a project similar to yours and have strange problems with IRLib.
Apparently you have had issues with that library, too and managed to solve them: http://forum.arduino.cc/index.php?topic=290311.15

I read up on your code and have the following question:

You have defined constants for marks and spaces compatible to Lightstrike. With these definitions you use sendGeneric and decodeGeneric. But you pass different configurations to the sender and the receiver. On the sending side you use LIGHT_STRIKE_MARK_ONE and on the receiving side just 0.
How does that work, why is it necessary ?

I looked at your IRLib-light and it seems like sendGeneric and decodeGeneric are (almost) identical to the original versions.

I have described my problem in the forum post in more detail and would be very grateful if you could share some experiences.