Marksman 1399 air gun

Factual Questions
1

Lately, I’ve been in the market for stuff other than actual work to do, and I found a Marksman 1399 air gun that comes with a dartboard.

I’m not exactly afraid of accidentally putting someone’s eye out a la Christmas Story, but I was wondering, for safety’s sake…

Am I dealing with an actual weapon here? I mean, I figured that if it’s coming with a dartboard that I’m assuming you hang on the wall that it’ll just kind of lob darts at it, and not put them through the sheetrock (or people) if I miss. It’s apparently not CO2-powered – there’s some spring-loaded mechanism that pumps the ammunition out when you cock the top thingy (hey, side question… what’s that top part of the gun called, anyway? The thing that slides back and forth when you fire).

2

No, air pistols are not “firearms” from a legal standpoint, though some juristictions do lump them together in certain classes of “weapons” (like spring batons, pepper spray, and martial arts equipment like nunchaku and so forth.)

I don’t know your particular model, but if it’s spring powered, chances are it’s not very powerful. I’m assuming by “darts” you mean those tiny little silver cylinders with the tiny spike on one end and the little whisk-broom brush on the other?

If you drive them fast enough, yeah, they’ll go through sheetrock, but most of the little spring-powered guns won’t. If yours is, say, that black potmetal gun that looks kind of like a Colt 45, with the little tip-up barrel chamber doodad on the front, that will barely give you 150 fps (I chronographed one once. In fact, I “flicked” the gun, as if I was tossing a rock, as I fired it over the chrono and got almost 220 fps :smiley: )

The darts are a little heavier and so you get even less. They’ll stick to the board when fired from 20 feet or so, past that and you’re lucky if they don’t just bounce off.

But again, it depends on how powerful the gun is- a high quality pump-up or CO2 powered pellet gun could drive the dart through a 2X4 edgewise.

3
      • You can put your eye out with that airgun, but it is one of the least powerful airguns available in the US. It has less than one foot-pound of muzzle energy, “260 fps” claimed but with a 6-grain steel BB that’s about 0.9xxx ft-lbs. You can buy “plastic” spring-piston air rifles now at the same places that sell the dart-gun-sets that have around ten times that power. If you cough up a few hundred bucks, you can get a European-made rifle that might be 20 or 25 times as powerful. Three sheets of corrugated cardboard would probably stop those darts if you shot from a foot away. They are not going to go through sheetrock when fired from that gun.
        …
  • However I would advise that you to be extremely careful when shooting steel BB’s from any airgun. Steel BB’s bounce very energetically off hard objects, where lead balls and lead pellets won’t. You can buy lead balls the same size as BB’s but many of these cheap repeater BB pistols won’t work with lead balls because their loading mehcanisms use magnets to retain BBs at strategic positions, and lead BBs aren’t magnetic.
    …
  • And the top part of an autopistol that slides back and forth when fired is called… the slide.
    ~
4

Guys, it’s not even an airgun. That thing you pull back and push back in only cocks a spring.

Put on a leather shoe, and shoot yourself in the foot. That’ll give you an idea of the power.

5

oops, nevermind.
I’d still do it, but I no longer recomened it to others.

6

Recommend, even. :o

7

That thing is called a slide, and yep its a real airgun, The spring powers a pump which provides the air to propel the projectile.

Even tho its not real powerful you can still have some fun, set up a cardboard box stuffed with rags in your living room and plink away, unless you are married and then you won’t be able to.

8

Personal anecdote here. When I was a teenager I had the Crosman pistol that I think you’re talking about. You have to load the darts individually, and reload for each shot. The “darts” didn’t have fins like darts you play in a pub, but rather a little tuft of synthetic “feathers” so they more resembled a blowgun dart.

While I do not recommend anyone shooting themselves, ever, with anything, the gist of what Eleusis said was correct. Namely – it was pretty weak. Of course, it could still put you eye out, so don’t think they’re not dangerous (they are). But… no, I doubt the dart would go into sheetrock.

In fact, unless I stood really, really close to the dartboard the little suckers wouldn’t even stick in that. As mentioned, the gun was pretty weak. Secondly, the darts weren’t all that sharp. I had to stand so close to the dartboard it wasn’t that much of a challenge to be accurate.

I think you might find it to be a letdown. It looks fun, sounds fun, but didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

Good luck, have fun, and be safe.