How many survived the "bb gun" wars?

[AK103K]

Ok, I know this isnt really a PC subject these days, but back when we were kids, in the pre paint ball 60's, we used to have bb gun fights. This is one of the reasons we were never allowed to have one as "little" kids. My dad knew what was up. We had .22's at 4 or 5, but were not allowed to own a bb gun.(slingshots seemed to dissapear as fast as we made them too.) He was right, even though they shot something, we still treated them as toys. Of couse, there were plenty to get ahold of. Our favorie places were in a buddys basement and the woods down by the river. We mostly used the old spring cock pistols and leverguns, but this quickly escalated to bigger things as we got older. At the end we were using wax bullets and those Speer plastic bullets out of 38's. I'm here to tell you, they hurt like a bit*h when you get hit. We were in our later teens by then and getting dumber and dumber by the minute. Nobody ever got their eye put out, (we did wear goggles a lot of times) but we all had plenty of welts. Looking back on it now, it seems a little foolish, but then again, so do the bags full of REAL M80's and Cherry Bombs we used to walk around with. (aahh, the days of true freedom ) So, anybody else remembering that "sting" as you read this?

 

[cslinger]

Ahh yes I am a decorated veteran of the BB wars. I can still feel the sting. Did you have that one kid who's parents bought him the cool pump BB gun and the little jerk would pump it up like a 1000 times the night before. Woe to you if you took a round from that.

Ahhh good times. Stupid but fun.

 

[sidearm]

I survived them through the 70's. Too fun. We used to dress up in layers and still get welts.

 

[Thumper]

You didn't want to get in range of my Crossman 760 circa 1980...

 

[2nd Amendment]

Decorated survivor of the BB Wars. Retired my commision when a BB snapped the lense of my high-tech eye protection(old pair of "aviator" shades).

 

[MikeK]

Played in the 60's. Never got hit, but did hit some others. As someone else said - stupid but fun.

 

[Hkmp5sd]

Been there, done that. Wore out more than one BB gun during loyal service in the wars.

 

[waynzwld]

yeah.......

I survived many a B-B gun fight. We wern't complacent with just B-B guns, every year we would have bottle rocket fights which eventually progressed to very dangerous when some started using large rockets.

How no one lost an eye or suffered severe wounds or even death is a mystery.

 

[Feanaro]

Never been in a BB war myself. My father wasn't stupid enough to give me one till he thought I was past that.

My brother was another story. I swear he was trying to off me. I survived though.

 

[JPM70535]

You had to have been there in the "Fifties" to understand our mentality. We were invincible and nothing as puny as a BB was ever going to cause us harm. Then one day my Buddy got me in the back from about 10 feet away with his pump Daisy. Still have the hole in my back from that one. Shortly after that we smartened up and took to shooting rats and birds and various and sundry other targets of oppertunity. No one ever got seriously hurt for which I remain eternally grateful.

 

[Sisco]

My Dad wouldn't let me have a BB gun
He knew me well enough to know I'd probably get in trouble with it. He did buy me a pump action .22 though. Figured I wouldn't be shooting it at street lights & neighborhood pets. No lights or pets but I did take out a tin can in the back yard once.

 

[zahc]

Bottle rocket wars RULE! esp. in standing corn. Spudguns can be interesting too (long ranges only). I like trying to catch the spuds in a baseball mitt. I ALWAYS wear my trust Scott goggles. Dangerous games.

 

[M. Jager]

Yep I survived bb gun wars
And paintball wars without masks
And walnut fights (the big green ones hurt the worse)
And apple fights
And bottle rocket wars (more dangerous to the shooter than the the target)
But the absolute worse was Roman Candle fights - those HURT
Also survived many misadventures in my misspent youth that I won't mention here.......

 

[cratz2]

My mom or dad never got me any sort of gun ever. But my mother allowed one of her friends to give me three BB guns one day. Her youngest son was going off to college and I guess she was passing the torch as it were. One was the Red Ryder but without the forearm and one was a really cool lever action that actually had an engraved nickle receiver and you actually loaded through the loading port as you would a centerfire rifle. The other was basically a junker but was a pump so that's the one I used the most.

When we moved, my grandmother threw all three of them away or gave them to the movers or somesuch... God bless her.

Never toook too serious of a hit but on the same day, one kid did get me in the leg enough that I bled for sure. And later the SAME day, the SAME kid threw a firecracker of some sort right at my ear. I heard that he now lives with a guy that looks quite a bit like me. Guess he was just working out some frustrations.

 

[benEzra]

I think I got my BB gun (a Daisy lever-action) when I was 6 or 7, and barely big enough to cock it. Never shot anyone with it, nor was I ever shot at), but I dispatched hordes of imaginary enemies in the woods behind my parents' house. (I even had a large vine to swing from--I was BLESSED.) Assaults on/defenses of the tree fort were also daily occurrences. Never shot any birds, either, but I did take out a bumblebee in flight one time from a range of a few feet (boy, was I proud of that one).

I was, however, a highly decorated admiral in the BB/Plastic Model Naval Wars. I used to buy plastic model battleships, etc., build them, float them in the ditch, and sink them. Even experimented with gluing styrofoam behind the "hull plating" to act as armor, and occasionally used fireworks (safely) as well. Filling a styrofoam egg carton with 12 small rocks and then sinking it by shooting out the individual compartments was also fun.

My college roommate used his BB gun as artillery in outdoor "Green Army Men" wars.

Best of all was the friend who had a sawed-off pellet gun. Literally. He hacksawed off the stock behind the pistol grip and cut the barrel (2-piece) to about 10", stabilizing the inner barrel with electrical tape. It was great fun (and totally legal), but met its demise when he shot it one time in the woods and the inner barrel went flying downrange . . .

 

[Mal H]

Yep, I gotta admit you can put me and my friends in the 'very stupid' category when we were young (mid 1950's to early 60's). BB gun fights would have been the mildest form of stupidity we engaged in. Ever stood behind a tree while a friend fired a 22 at a tree next to you to see what it sounded like? Ever fired cherry bombs out of a home made cannon at boats on the Potomac? Ever been fired at with a 12 Ga (#9 shot at about 100 yards) just to see what it felt like? I've done em all. The 12 Ga shot did nothing, it just sort of rained down on me like water, kinda cool.

My friends father was a Capt. on the Alexandria, VA Police Dept. (sort of like the preacher's son is the wildest of the bunch syndrome). We would actually shoot down pigeons with a 12 Ga in Alexandria! If you know the place, you know how completely numbskull a concept like that is.

Today we would be buried under the jail awaiting trial for terrorism even though hurting anyone, much less ourselves, was actually the furthest thing from our minds (what little we had at that time).

 

[Bowlcut]

Ah yes the good old days sonny....pull up a chair hear some of these war stories.

Im only minorly decorated veteran of the BB wars. They were on their down fall, we were only left there to pull the POW's out at the time I got in. So only a few skirmish's before the war drew to an end. But not before a few fearce battles insued trying to grab those POW's. We had to pull out the incendary derices and a few with their concussion granades got a few licks in

Back in the mid 80's when parents finaly wised up and didnt give their kids weapons....Or let us play totaly unsupervised with bottle rocketks, black cats, fire crackers, and the sorts

 

[Darrin]

My brother and I only had one BB gun, so no wars.

We did, however, have a set of lawn darts.....

 

[telewinz]

Had Army Games all the time till I shot a tree next to my buddy and it bounced -off and hit him in the eye. Woke both of us up real fast. Never again. No serious harm was done, told his mother (and me) that he had a "cold in his eye"


I was a decorated "veteran", built some of the best dugouts made by man. Ask me about our Viking battles with trash-can lids and dead/dried river reeds for spears and war clubs. Oh ! the humanity

 

[Kharn]

I wasnt allowed even a gun-shaped watergun, I got made fun of by all the kids on the block for that one, nor did I get any cap guns while I was a kid. I didnt even get my first pellet pistol until I was 20 (but I bought an Ar15 at 19 ). I guess you could say my gun collection is over-compensating for a childhood devoid of cap/BB/Nerf gun wars.

Kharn

 

[JHG]

Ah yes... B-B Gun Wars... we would "play" Army and shoot each other with B-B Guns. Lob in the occasional Hedge Apple that had been bored out and had a cherry bomb inserted. Talk about a mess!! When those guys detonated you got covered with a sticky milky mess, not to mention that it hurt! We had a 1 acre empty lot across the street that had more fox holes and trenches than the battle fields in WW1. We had huge caches off Black Walnuts (the big green babies). There were over twenty Black Walnut trees in my yard..

those were the days )

We played hard in Alabama..

 

[roscoe]

Plenty of BB-gun battles. My best friend had a freon-powered fully-automatic machine pistol. He would basically sit in the woods till we came past and hose us all down. We took to walking backwards, wearing jean jackets, into the withering fire. Finally someone lost a tooth, of all things, to a BB.

 

[280PLUS]

nope...

dirt bombs and rocks were all the weaponry we could muster, with garbage can lids as shields and ramshackle forts hastily thrown up we had some formidable battles...



we did have a kid who would stuff the end of his pop gun with dirt and kinda get a shotgun effect out of it....

 

[coonan357]

with 20 pumps and 20 bb's held in place by a pellet you could make a impromtu crosman760 shotgun .. and homemade hydrogen ballons and flares..

 

[zahc]

"Ever stood behind a tree while a friend fired a 22 at a tree next to you to see what it sounded like?"



"Ever been fired at with a 12 Ga (#9 shot at about 100 yards) just to see what it felt like?"


I always wanted to do that