Your first air gun / BB gun. What happened?

[max]

There was an old Red Ryder at my grandparents house out in the country. It had been one of my uncles many years previously. It had a range of about 10 feet, but I must have shot a million bb's through it. The older kid across the road had a similar Daisy with a plastic stock and forearm. Compared to the old worn out Red Ryder that thing was like a laser.

One Christmas, my folks bought me a Daisy Golden Eagle at the local hardware store. I used that thing for years and wish I had the bb's back I put through that thing. It got lost somehow in my parent's house after I moved away.

I now have a NIB Chief AJ Special in my basement. He is from the town I grew up in. He got a pallet of these in from Daisy and he had no way to unload them from the truck. My oldest friend owned the lumber yard and had a forklift. His "charge" for unloading the pallet was 2 guns. He got one and so did I.

My love affair with firearms started with toys and the Daisys were the intermediate steps.

 

[DeathGrip]

You are wrong your father will always be with you.

When I think of the day we bought that 760 I still smile. Maybe more remembering all the fun I had with it.

Thanks Dad!

 

[Gene L]

I had a Daisy BB pistol. I had a Daisy pump. I found that I could unscrew the barrel from the pump and screw it into the pistol. Worked great!

As a kid, I got pretty good with throwing things up in the air and shooting them with the pistol. Been 60 years ago, but, as I remember, I could shoot golf balls with ease.

We trained with BB guns for Quick Kill when I was in Ranger School in 68. Not pistols, though. The targets were aluminum discs about the size of a half-dollar thrown up in the air by your Ranger Buddy. No aiming, just pointing. It didn't take long to get very good at it. The class was only about 4 hours then to live fire with M 16s at close range. I don't know how effective the training was in real life.

 

[arjay]

Had a paper route and mowed 3 lawns at 13. Bought a BB gun and a homemade mini bike.Had them both taken away repeatedly ;-)

 

[Aggie1906]

Christmas 1951. Brand new Red Ryder. Lived on family farm. Old school dad paid sparrow bounty, kept me in ammo. Plymouth model, latest plastic stock. I hated that, and traded later for an old time woodie.
Then up to model 25 pump, more power. Went to crossman .22, and after four badges of Jr. NRA my own Remington .22. 550. Still have it
Army loaned me an M-14 for a while. Dang, that thing could shoot out.

 

[DeathGrip]

Had a paper route and mowed 3 lawns at 13. Bought a BB gun and a homemade mini bike.Had them both taken away repeatedly ;-)

Mini bikes were another problem.

 

[sceva]

Mine was a Daisy Spitten Image mod 1894 lever action.

A bit of trivia; In El Dorado after the girl shoots John Wayne and gets too close the rifle he throws in the creek is a Daisy 1894

 

[dr. mordo]

I wish I could remember what bb rifle I had. I think it was a Crosman, but it looked pretty much like a pump action rifle with no 880-style handle. It might have been a Crosman 760, but I'm not sure. It limited how much you could pump, so after a couple of pumps you could feel that it was easier to pump. I shot that thing an incredible amount. I'm certain many thousands of bbs passed thru the barrel. I'm convinced that the time spent with that gun when I was 10-14 is why 30 years later, the first time I shot an M4 during military qualification, I shot expert. The second time I shot a perfect score.

I don't have the gun above, but I do have my first pistol, a Daisy 188. It still works about like it always did, and again I shot it an incredible amount when I was a kid. It was not a powerhouse by any means, but it was and is fun to shoot.

My grandfather had a Daisy 880 for 30 years that I now have. I haven't shot it a few years, but last time I broke it out it still shot straight. The stock is loose. I looked into it and it's major surgery to fix the stock so I haven't bothered. I'd shoot it much more but I live in a suburban environment these days.

 

[4T5GUY]

My wonderful Dad gave me my brothers 1947 Daisy Red Ryder that he just could not be “responsible” with. I was 6 yrs old and at that time my brother was 20. (He was younger than that when he lost his privileges with it. ) Lots younger.

I still have it today and enjoy shooting it cause I’ve always been responsible. Well at least that’s the way I remember it. As others have said that Red Ryder was the start of my interest, OK ADDICTION to “guns.” To this day my brother does not have or like firearms.

Jim

 

[jimbo728]

Crosman 760 pump. Loved that rifle. Think I got it when I was a 6th or 7th grader.
Jim

 

[max503]

I sold garden seeds to get my first BB gun. It was a daisy. You racked the slide once, like a 1911 to cock it. I ordered it without telling my parents, and it came in the mail when neither one of them was home!
The thing had very little power. I got in the habit of pushing my palm down on the muzzle to cock it until one day I shot my hand doing that. It didn't penetrate. It wouldn't kill a bird, either. I don't know what happened to it. I must have been around 9 or 10. It must have been one of these:

 

[Decker]

Daisy C02/200 pistol. Designed to look like a Colt Woodsman.
Snuck over to a drug store that sold BB guns and bought it when I was 13, maybe 14 years old. IIRC, it was something like $14.95, but that's an old memory I can't count on.
That was in the early '60's.

Weirdest thing; I came across it in a box a couple of weeks ago.
Weirder yet... it still works.
I shot a cylinder worth of BB's and it sure brought back memories.

 

[JayFramer]

Had a Crossman (or Beeman?) BB rifle with a large magazine and pump action mechanism. Ugly black wood grain plastic stock but it was a fun rifle. Shot many of dad’s beer cans and even assassinated a frog with it (yeah I felt bad about that, taught me a good lesson about death).

Also had a Crossman (or Beeman??) underlever BB pistol with push forward slide to loads the BB, single shot. Was worn out (was my brothers) but it was still accurate and powerful enough to scare away cats.

My dad had one of those fake security cameras mounted to the side of the garage. I guess I watched too many James Bond’s films as one day I pretended to be Bond and shot the security camera with the BB gun acting like I was infiltrating a secret facility! Dad never found the hole lol.

 

[swsig]

In elementary school, I had a Daisy target pistol like the one pictured. It came with a plastic BB trap with three spinning plastic targets. Eventually, I blew the targets to pieces (just like I do today ), and I began to shoot it less, then not at all. Although my parents kept a lot of my childhood stuff, the Daisy didn't make the cut.

 

[BC38]

Regular old Daisy Red Ryder.
I probably shot 20,000 copper coated steel BBs through that thing.
I got to where I didn't even need the sights to hit anything larger than a golf ball out to around 10-15 yards.

My maternal grandfather wrapped it, and the one belonging to my little brother, around a tree after we used them to shoot the glass out of an "old rusty abandoned pickup cab". The pickup cab turned out to be an early 1950's Willys and the glass was worth a few hundred bucks - even back in the mid 70's when we ruined it.

 

[robvious]

I remember two other first bb guns I have in my collection..
I have my late father's bb pistol... a Plainsmen... still in the box... gave it to me as a Chistmas present... after he was done with it..
the other bb gun is from a special source... the mother of the best man from our marriage was a spare mom for me... none of her 3 children had any desire for guns and when I helped them clean out the house so they could move to a senior living campus she dragged me down to the basement under the stairs and pulled out HER Daisy rifle and handed it to me... it leans in the corner of our living room with my grandfather's cane waiting for visitors to ask about it..

 

[RobertJ.]

I have my mom's Red Ryder hanging in my hobby area, and it's the first BB gun I ever got to shoot. (I still shoot it out my window at random objects floating by in the river.) But when I was ten, my parents gave me a Crosman 760, and it shot circles around that Daisy. I shot it until it wore out. The piece connecting the forend to the piston broke, and I was outta luck. But I shot thousands, and I mean thousands, of BB's and pellets with it before that happened.

 

[Gamecock]

One trick I learned and fooled many with was lighting a match tossed in the air when I shot. I figured out that a strike anywhere kitchen match would fit down the barrel. When shot the friction of travel down the barrel would ignite the match so at night no one noticed that the tossed match just landed on the ground. All they saw was the match I "shot" lighting up in mid air. I kept that to myself and never told a soul.

Forget the Python! I want to get me a BB gun and try this!

 

[Gamecock]

Got curious, so I Googled it. The image isn't mine, but it looks just like the one I had...

Yeah, I had one of those, too. It worked well, as I recall.

 

[schutzen-jager]

still have my Red Ryder that was a birthday present in 1951 - the scope has long disappeared with the box , but I still have the targets + cleaning kit I got with it - little rust spotting , but still shoots like when it was new -