.177 Caliber CO2 Hand gun Lethality

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expat_alaska

expat_alaska

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Hi folks,

I have a question that I am sure you can answer. I have never posted on this forum section before, I am 66, and have been shooting since 1962 (10 years old then). I started with a Remington 510A single-shot .22 rifle and went on from there. I have never owned a pellet/BB gun as my parents would only allow me to have a Daisy air rifle, but they soon found out I was playing "Army" with other neighborhood kids, sticking the muzzle in the dirt and shooting dirt clods from it, and that was the end of that.

Back to the point of my thread/post.

My daughter found out that her 18-year-old son was in possession of a pellet pistol. She had no knowledge of it, nor what the manufacturer is, said it was heavy (like a "real" gun), and that it used CO2 cartridges. He had been pointing it at his younger brother (even though it had no pellets or cartridges) like he was playing in a damned fantasy video game.

Compared to a .22 (Short, Long, or Long Rifle cartridge in a handgun), how potent is it? I know a multitude of small game animals have been taken using a pellet gun.

Sorry to be so uninformed at my age. My main passion these days are BP C&B revolvers.

Thanks in advance!

Jim
 
It will put yer eye out...

and the super high velocity rifles are known to cause death, the kid gets shot in the abdomen, the peritoneum is punctured, the kid is too embarresed to tell its parents and the wound is very small, develops peritonitis, and is dead before anyone realizes what is wrong
 
I'm your age and in the past year got back into air guns so I'm sure you'll get more informative answers than mine. Any kind of 22 cal. cartridge is going to have more killing power than your average CO2 pistol that generally travel less than 500 feet/second. Most CO2 guns are in .177 or .22 cal. Can a pellet gun take small rodents and the like, yes, but they have to be well placed shots. Pellet guns have killed humans so they should be treated as you would a firearm i.e. ( do not point at anything you don't want to kill) If I had pointed a pellet/bb gun at anyone I would have received a major beating and loss of use of that weapon. In my state you can't even carry an air gun off your property without a pistol permit and has to be transported in the same way a firearm. Be sure you know your state/town laws about air guns.
 
expat_alaska said:
My daughter found out that her 18-year-old son was in possession of a pellet pistol. She had no knowledge of it, nor what the manufacturer is, said it was heavy (like a "real" gun), and that it used CO2 cartridges.
Click to expand...
A CO2 cartridge pistol is not going to be very powerful (compared to other types of pellet guns) let alone any type of .22 firearm, but that does not make it totally harmless. At the least, it could cause serious eye damage if it hit there.

He had been pointing it at his younger brother (even though it had no pellets or cartridges) like he was playing in a damned fantasy video game.
Click to expand...
If I caught anyone pointing any type of gun as my child, they would be in for a whole WORLD of hurt. At the very least, I would permanently confiscate the gun as 18-year-old or not he is obviously not mature enough to have one unsupervised. Any punishment beyond that is dependent on your daughter's relationship with her (nominally) adult child (I know at that age I started to be very resistant to accepting parental discipline without a fight).

You might suggest enrolling both your grandsons in a proper gun safety class, or else taking them to the range yourself and teaching them basic gun safety and how dangerous a gun can actually be. Even if they do not own or plan to own any "real" firearms, I think its a worthwhile thing for anyone to know.
 
I cannot find any articles regarding someone being killed with a co2 powered pistol, however there are a handful of cases of people being shot with air rifles that have died. Physical injury aside, your grandson could get in a world of trouble pointing that gun at somebody who is willing to press charges. In Florida, aggravated assault is a felony that can get you 15 years in prison. Aggravated assault is nothing more than pointing a gun at someone. It could also get him shot by somebody standing their ground or law enforcement. You need to have a serious talk with that boy. Gun etiquette is black and white. No gray area. People shoot and kill their friends every year with 'empty' guns.
 
Good afternoon,
I have been using CO2 handguns for years and have been lucky (disciplined ) enough to never shoot myself with one. Lead pellets would be bad enough but if you could see the dents in target traps made out of aluminum or mild steel by steel BBs then yeah. I don't want to get shot by anything so when those CO2 revolvers come out, so do common sense range rules. A serious conversation is in order. If the Police see it in his hands, they are not going to risk it being a gunpowder weapon. Good luck on this tough issue.
regards
 
Gadsden2A said:
I cannot find any articles regarding someone being killed with a co2 powered pistol, however there are a handful of cases of people being shot with air rifles that have died. Physical injury aside, your grandson could get in a world of trouble pointing that gun at somebody who is willing to press charges. In Florida, aggravated assault is a felony that can get you 15 years in prison. Aggravated assault is nothing more than pointing a gun at someone. It could also get him shot by somebody standing their ground or law enforcement. You need to have a serious talk with that boy. Gun etiquette is black and white. No gray area. People shoot and kill their friends every year with 'empty' guns.
Click to expand...

The other problem is he has no inkling that LE folks know that it is a non-handgun. One look at it by an LEO on duty if he has it in his hand and he will be a target. I don't care if he knows it or not but he had better get some smarts in the real world. There is a real problem with
 
Typical velocities will be in the high 300fps to mid 400fps range for a CO2 pistol. A bit higher with BBs. It will almost certainly penetrate the skin and could easily cause a nasty injury. Death is unlikely but not totally impossible.

If he's pointing it at people it should be taken away from him.
 
A widely circulated news story from January this year told the very sad, short tale of an 8 year old girl shot in the eye with a BB gun and then died. The eye is a weak point, the skull being very thin behind it, so not hard to imagine even a 350fps steel BB passing right into the brain by that route. No gun is to be messed around with. At 18 this kid should have been taught much better. I was taught safe gun handling with a BB rifle when I was 7, and it stuck. These things may be sold as toys, but they're not, and the persistent attitude, especially among macho firearms owners, that airguns are just toys, is a big part of the problem. ALL guns should be treated with care and respect, with the rules adhered to at all times regardless of muzzle velocity or perceived potential danger. It's for this reason that I have never participated in paintball nor airsoft wargames. Sure, I bet it's fun as heck, but I just can't accommodate shooting at others with a gun, whether you call it a 'marker' or not. This sort of nonsense instills an unhealthy attitude towards guns. Anyway, here's that news report:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/09/indiana-girl-8-dies-after-being-shot-in-eye-with-bb-gun.html
 
expat_alaska writes:

...sticking the muzzle in the dirt and shooting dirt clods from it, and that was the end of that.
Click to expand...

Funny! One of us trailer-park kids had one of those that we passed around so much I can't remember whose it actually was, and we did the exact same things with it. Only, it wasn't just each other that caught its wrath; the neighborhood Muscovy ducks always ended up dirtier than before, too.

Just last month, I saw one of those guns, complete with its "Trail Boss" lettering, on eBay, and decided it was worth it for the nostalgia. They were known as "Pop Guns", and were based on a Daisy model number I can't recall right now (100? 109? Something like that.)

I'm using it as one of my tools to keep training my daughter on gun safety (we haven't stuck it in the dirt yet, but I'm sure it's coming!)
 
Muscovy ducks? You must live in South Florida. Bane of the suburbs those ducks are.
 
a_canadian said:
A widely circulated news story from January this year told the very sad, short tale of an 8 year old girl shot in the eye with a BB gun and then died. The eye is a weak point, the skull being very thin behind it, so not hard to imagine even a 350fps steel BB passing right into the brain by that route. No gun is to be messed around with. At 18 this kid should have been taught much better. I was taught safe gun handling with a BB rifle when I was 7, and it stuck. These things may be sold as toys, but they're not, and the persistent attitude, especially among macho firearms owners, that airguns are just toys, is a big part of the problem. ALL guns should be treated with care and respect, with the rules adhered to at all times regardless of muzzle velocity or perceived potential danger. It's for this reason that I have never participated in paintball nor airsoft wargames. Sure, I bet it's fun as heck, but I just can't accommodate shooting at others with a gun, whether you call it a 'marker' or not. This sort of nonsense instills an unhealthy attitude towards guns. Anyway, here's that news report:

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/01/09/indiana-girl-8-dies-after-being-shot-in-eye-with-bb-gun.html
Click to expand...
There was also a news story about a young boy accidentally shooting his sister with his Daisy air rifle at close range in the ear and it passed through the ear canal to her brain, killing her. Sorry I don't have the link to the story. Very sad stories. I've heard friends talk about BB gun fights they had as kids only shooting each other below the waist. Ya right, what could possibly go wrong? When I was a kid growing up in Connecticut we all walked down the street carrying our bb rifles heading for the woods. Nobody thought anything of it. Now you need a carry permit to transport an air gun in this state. It's sure gone from one extreme to another.
 
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Yeah, I grew up in the 60's in a major city, and never got so much as a funny look for carrying a Daisy BB repeater rifle or later a Czech break-barrel .22" pellet rifle. We'd go around looking for fun stuff to shoot at. Did a bit of hunting, mostly pigeons. Nowadays a kid would have cops all over his ass for less. Friggin' airsoft gets kids in trouble. Hell, a nicely made airsoft pirate pistol as part of a Hallowe'en costume can get a kid in trouble. Such a sissy culture we've morphed into. Kids in the 60's still knew how to shoot, and what not to shoot, with the odd kid of course being a screw up little monster and shooting other kids... But hey, they still do that. Legal changes haven't stopped idiots from being idiots. Only stopped most kids from having fun and learning useful skills. I bet fewer than 10% of kids today have access to a pocket knife. My son is one of three or four in his whole school who can carve. That's less than 1%, and that's just sad.
 
MedWheeler said:
expat_alaska writes:



Funny! One of us trailer-park kids had one of those that we passed around so much I can't remember whose it actually was, and we did the exact same things with it. Only, it wasn't just each other that caught its wrath; the neighborhood Muscovy ducks always ended up dirtier than before, too.

Just last month, I saw one of those guns, complete with its "Trail Boss" lettering, on eBay, and decided it was worth it for the nostalgia. They were known as "Pop Guns", and were based on a Daisy model number I can't recall right now (100? 109? Something like that.)

I'm using it as one of my tools to keep training my daughter on gun safety (we haven't stuck it in the dirt yet, but I'm sure it's coming!)
Click to expand...
We did that on Long Island, too, but the ducks of choice were pekins. LOL And, no, I would not advocate doing it now.
 
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