The way it was

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When I was 10 I had to cajole my parents into buying me a BB gun in the next county, since BB guns were illegal in NYC.

I got a Daisy model 25 pump action since it had a rear peep sight, a hooded front sight, and a positive spring loaded magazine. As far as I was concerned, a real target gun.

My range was the longest hallway in our apartment, plus part of a bedroom, total about 35'. I shot at a target, often a paper plate, mounted on a box full of old phone books, newspapers and magazines.

Since you couldn't get BB's locally, every effort was made to recover them and shoot again.
 
After my experience with a bb gun I vowed that our boys would never own one. There was a kid on the street that shot out street lights and other things. I caught him in the act and broke the gun over my knee and threw it in the garbage. His Dad was mad as a hornet and I told him that it was his fault for letting his sun run the neighborhood with a bb gun shooting anything that he fancied. Our youngest son shot out my back window of my Chevy s10 with that same gun. After all that I gave all the neighborhood kids lessons on gun safety.
 
jmr40 said:
I
The kid across the street and I used to combine all of our toy soldiers, tanks, Jeeps, etc., and lay out a battlefield in his back yard. We would take mud and pack it around firecrackers with the fuse exposed. After the mud dried they became our hand grenades. We would then use our BB guns and homemade hand grenades to knock over the toy soldiers. Then set them up and do it over again.
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oh man, that brings back some memories! several fireworks stores were open year round back then and we would buy enormous quantities of black cat fire crackers and bottle rockets. packing mud around them was surprisingly fun. i used to terrorize crawdad holes with them too
 
Varminterror said:
Mine was a Crosman 760 Pumpmaster.
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I wore some squirrel out with one of these. First pump bb pellet gun. Good times.
I get off the bus one day my paw paw was shooting up a tree. Walked and asked what you doing paw paw? Sid he was trying to shoot a Caterpillar thy bores holes in trees and kills them. Been shooting for 20 minutes before I came along. I asked for my BB gun. Got that joker first shot. So we rode to Kmart and got a Benjamin. That was so much better then the crosman. Thanks for the memories. Haven’t thought about this in a long time! RIP paw paw. Gone but not forgotten.
 
jmr40 said:
The kid across the street and I used to combine all of our toy soldiers, tanks, Jeeps, etc., and lay out a battlefield in his back yard. [...] We would then use our BB guns [...] to knock over the toy soldiers.
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I’d largely dismissed the memory while reveling in that of my own time as a kid with a BB gun, but when my wife and I met, she had done very little shooting as a kid and basically none as an adult. Using my same old Pumpmaster 760, I retaught her how to shoot by setting up a field of toy green army men in our basement - one pump with the 760 would provide sufficient precision and velocity to cross 10yrds of our basement and knock over the toy soldiers, but wouldn’t penetrate a single sheet of cardboard we had laid along the wall to protect the drywall. I’d drag a magnet around the basement before vacuuming each week to reclaim whatever BB’s we hadn’t already spotted and recovered.
 
We had a red rider and a 760 pellet rifle but I didn’t care much for shooting either of them. My older brothers had 10-22’s so I guess I thought BB guns were uncool because of hanging around with them. When I was a teenager I bought a battery powered semi auto air soft pistol and a single shot spring bb pistol and I used to sit in my room and shoot bb’s into the opening of a pop can laying flat from across the room. I got so good at that that I could shoot a whole handful into the can and not loose any of them. I think I learned a lot about sight alignment and follow through from that.
 
someguy2800 said:
I think I learned a lot about sight alignment and follow through from that.
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that's the point of the meme in the OP. high velocity rifles can mask some poor technique in some positions. but shooting low velocity like BB and pellets and airsoft and even 22lr requires a certain amount of 'follow through' and better trigger control, especially on the typically horrible triggers those guns have. getting good with BBs by shooting 100,000 of them (which prob cost about $30 in the early 80s) will make high power rifles a walk in the park
 
I would pick up broken BB and pellet guns from the local kids and repair them.
Sometimes I even got to shoot them for a while if they had BBs in them.
My aim improved somewhat but never got particularly good.
I hated to kill any living thing unless we needed it for food (I still do).
I usually managed to hold on to the gun until Dad noticed it.
It seems that you could get a whole carton of Pall Mall Reds for the price of a used BB gun... .
 
I got a new Daisy Model 25 Pump in 53 at Christmas but really started using it in the spring so i was 8 . I kept it oiled , no spiting in the BBs as my friends did in their Red Ryders, it has 50 BB spring fed. It also seemed to be a little stronger than all my friends lever actions, hence I out ranged them. We had woods surrounding our little 10 acres and I found that my BB gun would NOT kill the fat woodchucks of rural NJ. I got a Winchester 69 by the time I hit ten and had been using a friends worn out Stevens Liltle Maynard before that , clandestinely , that would kill those garden destroying wood chucks so it was overlooked until I got the Win 69 .22 the following year.
Of course the errant BB would be shot, not by me, at each other and I learned they could stick in bare skin so I learned to NOT get shot early, which served me well later.
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taliv said:
that's the point of the meme in the OP. high velocity rifles can mask some poor technique in some positions. but shooting low velocity like BB and pellets and airsoft and even 22lr requires a certain amount of 'follow through' and better trigger control, especially on the typically horrible triggers those guns have. getting good with BBs by shooting 100,000 of them (which prob cost about $30 in the early 80s) will make high power rifles a walk in the park
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My old man used to shoot a lot of prairie dogs and has had all kinds of rifles, most of them have 8 lb staple gun triggers. I was talking about doing trigger jobs one day and asked if he wanted me to work on or adjust any of his stuff and he shrugged and said I learned to shoot on stuff with worse triggers than these.
 
someguy2800 said:
My old man used to shoot a lot of prairie dogs and has had all kinds of rifles, most of them have 8 lb staple gun triggers. I was talking about doing trigger jobs one day and asked if he wanted me to work on or adjust any of his stuff and he shrugged and said I learned to shoot on stuff with worse triggers than these.
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Yeah, I know how he feels. When we went to Glocks, they installed a NY++ trigger in ours, 12lb. pull.

Retired, still have the same trigger in it. I'm used to it, so it stays.
 
buy enormous quantities of black cat fire crackers and bottle rockets. packing mud around them was surprisingly fun.
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I can't imagine 10 year old kids doing that today. In fact, I'd not allow my grandkids to do it today. I sometimes wonder how as many of us from my generation survived. And firecrackers were a LOT more powerful back in the late 60's and early 70's when we were doing this.


I put 2 of these together a few years ago for my grandkids to shoot at with BB guns. One went to my oldest grandson's home, the other stays in my back yard. It was really simple, just PVC glued together. I don't recall the cost, but it wasn't much.

I have paracord looped over the top with a S hook to hold cans. They get the reactive movement of the cans, but you don't have to go set them back up. At least until the cans get too full of holes, or the pull tab breaks.

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jmr40 said:
I can't imagine 10 year old kids doing that today. In fact, I'd not allow my grandkids to do it today. I sometimes wonder how as many of us from my generation survived. And firecrackers were a LOT more powerful back in the late 60's and early 70's when we were doing this.
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If I would have known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of my body. lol
 
I'd love to know how many milk cartons of copperhead bb's I went through as a kid with my Daisy. It wasn't the Red Ryder, it was the cheaper version with the straight plastic stock. I went from Big K cans to setting up nickels and pennies in the barn and watching them fly. I also know that if you set a penny on a nut and shoot it enough times with a Daisy that you'll eventually concave the penny. Even once I was allowed to have a Crossman air rifle I still used the Daisy a lot. We always had pigeons in the barn and Dad paid $2/head. The air rifle would go through the roof if I pumped it hard enough to kill a pigeon, but the Daisy had just enough power to break their wings so they'd fall to the ground where I could dispatch them. If I was fast enough I could get 2 or 3 before they'd fly out the door.
 
bassjam said:
I'd love to know how many milk cartons of copperhead bb's I went through as a kid with my Daisy. It wasn't the Red Ryder, it was the cheaper version with the straight plastic stock. I went from Big K cans to setting up nickels and pennies in the barn and watching them fly. I also know that if you set a penny on a nut and shoot it enough times with a Daisy that you'll eventually concave the penny. Even once I was allowed to have a Crossman air rifle I still used the Daisy a lot. We always had pigeons in the barn and Dad paid $2/head. The air rifle would go through the roof if I pumped it hard enough to kill a pigeon, but the Daisy had just enough power to break their wings so they'd fall to the ground where I could dispatch them. If I was fast enough I could get 2 or 3 before they'd fly out the door.
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My neighbor had a similar deal with his kid but he wouldn't let us shoot a bb gun in there, we had a little fiberglass recurve bow and arrows with rubber tips. I don't remember hitting very many of them but that didn't stop us from trying. I think we would have done far less damage to the roof with a bb gun.
 
My neighbor when I was growing up was a kid 1 year my junior. He carried a typical BB gun everywhere...don't recall the model. His shirt pocket was alway bulging with numerous boxes of BBs. He would go through hundreds every day...cock/shoot, cock/shoot, cock shoot. Always instinct shooting. His accuracy was uncanny. He could hit ants crawling across the side walk, bumble bees in flight, walnuts in trees, acorns, birds, running cats, any small object tossed in the air. He was amazing. I couldn't afford that many BBs so I was more selective in my target choice. He ate the same way he shot.....constantly, so he became a big fat kid. But, no one dared make fun of him, he would shoot offenders too.
 
I probably should have had the foresight to have posted for all 3 of us, rather than fragmenting these into individual posts. When my son reached a physical size to hold up a Nerf blaster, we started teaching him marksmanship and firearm safety, and had him knocking over toy dinosaurs in our living room. By the time he was 2, he was big enough to carry my old 760 Pumpmaster, so we’d hike through some properties I own “rabbit hunting,” which really only consisted of stalking and shooting hedge apples and walnut bunches hanging in trees. Here, he was shooting my wife’s 760, obviously newer than mine with its fiber optic front sight - and a newer gas piston seal which doesn’t lose pressure. We carried a set of fiberglass tent poles as shooting sticks for him and could easily burn through an entire 200 round internal “magazine” in an afternoon hiking together.

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Had two friend growing that only had one good eye due to BB gun wars. JT or Scott if y’all are reading this then I hope you teach your youngins to not shoot at each other! And teach your kids friends some gun safety.
 
cslinger said:
I still have my “first one”. As a matter of fact I was just looking at a picture of me at 7 years old shooting it.

I actually tried shooting her the other day and while she feeds and fires fine she just dribbles the rounds out with no power. Bounces off paper at point blank range, but I still have her. :)

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Does anyone sell rebuild kits for the pistons in those old air guns, or any air guns for that matter? I wonder if a hydraulic shop could hook you up? They are probably basic O-rings if I were to guess.
 
troy fairweather said:
My dad hated bb guns always said they can be as dangerous as a 22, think it was sincee his cousin would shot him with a red rider when they visited dad would beat up the cousin then dad would get the belt when grandpa got home lol.
I did have a few to shoot in the yard since we were in town, had a few original red riders, a daisy pump, model 25? Can't remember. I like the 2 760s the best tho, one had sights and the other dad found a nice old 3/4" weaver we put on it.

my favorite target was shooting dandelion tops off and we lived by a small creek. Later in high school I was in jrotc and shot in the air rifle team. Did pretty good and moved up to a walther after a few weeks but started on the daisy 753, I made expert with it and shot a few practice matches with a 300 scope. It was a cheap gun but boy did those shoot.

2 years ago after all the years I got a daisy 853 from cmp, they have the original 753 stocks tho. Fun when I can shoot it but can't were I live now.

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I have that same CMP Daisy air rifle! It's a good little air gun and my dad got it for a bit over $100 if I recall when I was in JROTC in high school as I was on the marksmanship team and did pretty well actually. I was literally the only freshman on the team my freshman year if that means anything, lol.
 
270OKIE said:
Does anyone sell rebuild kits for the pistons in those old air guns, or any air guns for that matter? I wonder if a hydraulic shop could hook you up? They are probably basic O-rings if I were to guess.
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Not sure about rebuild kits, but automotive air conditioner orings are sold in kit containing multiple different sizes, likely to find some close enough. The ac rings are designed to seal off about 400 lbs of pressure and should be quite functional.

I started with a Crossman 1377 with pistol brace. It had interchangeable sights a square notch a b d a peep sight. I used the peep to good effect shooting # 309 primers ta 10 yds, also used to shoot army men in the back yard. That pistol accompanied me just about every where I went.
 
.308 Norma said:
"Two friend" with only one good eye?:eek::D
I agree with you though - we need to teach our "youngins" gun safety. My dad was adamant about not pointing "any gun at anything we didn't want to kill."
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Both lost an eye in different locations and times. One actually sued the parents of the boy who shoot him. The other well he drives a little funky.
 
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