I started doing really well in school in about 3th grade. As a reward for perfect marks for 2 straight years, in 1976 I was gifted with a Sheridan Bluestreak 5mm pellet gun. Shortly after I demonstrated I could shoot it well, I was gifted with a scope for it. It was a badass rig, but I was no longer invited to the neighborhood BB gun wars. Just as well, in the kids arms race it was the equivalent of a .50 cal Barrett sniper rifle.
I never shot anyone with it, and I only ever killed one critter (a squirrel, just to see if I could. I felt bad about it, and I still do). I still own the gun sort of. It’s at mom’s house about 1500 miles away, but it still worked well enough when I was last out that way. I actually learned to shoot when I was…musta have been 4…on my dad’s Marlin .22. That sounds ludicrous but I will admit Dad helped me hold the rifle while I aimed and worked the trigger. I’m told I wasn’t that bad for a toddler.
Yes, I had a .177 calibre single pump pellet gun when I was 10 or so. I enjoyed it greatly. It was hard to pump, and seemed to have a decent velocity. I think it would be illegal today because of the muzzle velocity. It could mostly go through a 2 by 4 and would knock a hare of it’s feet. I used it mostly for target practice, but the odd bird or rodent got it.
In later years it got some use in the city for pest control, because it did not have the tell-tale bang of a rifle. I don’t know what became of it and have not seen it for 20 years or so. At least that is my story (kidding).
I was 8 or so when Santa brought me a .177 Crossman pump. I thought my dad had gone nuts, none of my friends had guns. But, he took me to the dump and taught me about gun safety. I broke a ton of bottles with that gun.
We never had anything more than a cap gun. But in our crowded little corner of suburbia, a BB gun would be a disaster waiting to happen - lots of people and property crammed close together in 20’ wide rowhouses. I don’t know if any of the kids I knew had any sort of gun.
My uncle gifted me a brand new Daisy BB rifle for Christmas when I was 6. It was the last present I opened (reluctantly!) because everyone had been telling me for days that it was a life-size Barbie doll.
I didn’t have my own, but we had one in the family. We also had real guns and shot those. My dad was on the marksmanship team when he was in the Navy and I can remember going to the range with him and my grandfather as young as 5 or 6. This is probably why I never asked for a BB gun.
My little brother got a BB gun when he was around 8 yo. He is 11 years younger and by that time my dad had stopped going to the range. We had moved to the country and used to shoot targets placed down the hill from the deck with the BB gun.
I got a Daisy rifle from Sears when I was about 11 or 12. I too, shot one critter (a sparrow) and still feel badly about it. I don’t really feel badly about the street lights I shot out though, oddly enough. I can remember walking down the streets of my suburban neighborhood with it under my arm. Can you imagine a kid doing that today?
Yes, a break barrel spring piston air rifle. Same ballpark as Inigo’s 5mm Sheridan. I treated it exactly like I’d treat a .22. Practiced marksmanship and thinning out the local avian and rodent wildlife. Dissected a few of them—I did it in various biology classes, so why not? We hunted too, so it wasn’t like cleaning game was anything new.
Later, I was gifted an Anschutz competition air rifle and would practice four position rifle with it. Granddad got bitten by the air rifle bug big time, and spent many an afternoon in his shop stacking pellet holes on top of each other with a variety of rifles and pistols from Feinwerkbau. I really need to get a good indoor trap and get back into it.
Different crowd I ran with, but at no time would any of us have considered shooting BB guns at each other. EDIT: They did have fun using my rifles to make hanging silhouette targets ping and swing though.
I guess technically I didn’t possess any of the bb/pellet guns except one, but I had pretty much unrestricted access.
My parents and grandparents both had the super-cheapo single-cock Daisy bb gun similar to, but cheaper than a Red Ryder model. That’s what I learned to shoot on with my grandfather teaching. At home, it was used mostly to keep squirrels out of the garden, and cats from trying to crap in my brother’s sandbox. (it didn’t hit hard enough to break skin, but would sting) At the grandparents’ house, I was essentially turned loose once I was about 6-7 with it after being taught the rules.
At some point, my dad got a Daisy Powerline 880 pellet gun, and he loaned it to my grandfather to keep the squirrels and other creatures out of his peach trees and gardens. I guess when I was 10 or so, I got to use it, and basically went and shot up anything in the drainage ditch behind my grandparents’ house that I wanted to.
As to living in suburbia, I remember granddad shooting his rifles in the back yard of my dad’s house, while he and I were practicing archery and getting ready for archery deer season. A compressed cardboard backstop works great for both broadheads and .177 pellets. Neighbors never worried about a thing.
I had cap guns. They struck little dots of gun power make a pop. In my infinite wisdom as a kid I wondered what would happen if I bit one. If you are curious, the answer is you burn your mouth.
My brother got a new BB gun and gave me his old one. We used to make little people and animals out of clay and mount them on the posts of the dock for targets. My brother chipped a tooth when a BB ricocheted off the post and hit him in the mouth. But he didn’t put an eye out!
My cousin and my crazy uncle also had BB guns. They used to run around in the woods shooting each other. This was the point at which I decided to play in the house.
I did not have one. But around the age of 10, I bought an air soft gun (plastic yellow BBs) and in less than 24 hours I shot my sister with it and had it taken away by my mom.
Yes, I did, and still do, but not the same one. My ‘adult’ air pistol will bury a BB flush into a 2x4. I had an air rifle, mostly for use on squirrels attacking my bird feeder, but they built houses behind me, so those days are over. I gave it to my sister for use on pests at their place. It too was fairly powerful, about 1200 FPS. The squirrels had exit wounds.
I also have a Red Ryder BB gun - not original, it’s a ‘reissue’. It’s more like the one I had as a kid. It’s really just a fun toy. Like others, I have fond memories of dad teaching me to use it.