Toy guns

citizenguardian

New member
When I was a kid we had some rockin' toy guns. My brother, I remember, had these toy metal revolvers, with a cylinder that turned, fake cartridges in the chambers, and a hammer (double action only.. ;) )

My friend had a cool toy rifle, made with heavy metal, and a working bolt action. There was a wooden cartridge shaped thing in there (not removable) that would get dragged back and forth when you moved the action. It was supposed to be a Mauser, I think, but my memory might unreliable. Probably the coolest thing is that the gun had a sling, we could go on manuevers.

These were simply great toys.

And cap guns... There were no end to them. I remember little cheap metal and plastic semi-auto types with these little flat hammers which would smack against the little plate, and make the cap go bang. Revolvers had those plastic caps in a ring. These were all right, too, but we used to have the most fun just banging caps with a hammer or something.

Anyway, I have not seen any realistic toy guns in any toy stores for some years. I think that's too bad. What's interesting to me is that I didn't grow up THAT long ago, (I'm talking about the early seventies here.) It's funny to see how much things have changed. (My brother got those revolvers at a company X-mas party, for example, where all the boys of a certain age got the same thing. Can you imagine that today?)

Anyway, are there any cool toy guns anymore? Ones that simulate real firearms and not some plastic cartoon ray guns, or Star Wars stuff, or something?

I know that orange tips started getting stuck on the ends because cops smoked some kids years ago by accident, but I haven't even seen play wild-west revolvers with such tips in a long time.

Any ideas about this?
 
Sorry but the toy guns we grew up with have gone the way of the dodo. Even the ones with the orange barrels and the neon green handguards are drying up. It's all part of the politically correct BS we have around us every day. If your kids play cowboys and indians they will grow up to be serial killers, didn't you know??

Actually this bugs the crap out of me too. I used to love those little guns that shoot the discs and the ones with the tiny little styrofoam pellets too.

Did you know that some crooks are actually painting the barrels on their guns orange and green when they use them in crimes?? It gives them a little edge on the poor police officer they pull it on. The police are taught to think twice when they see the color and they hesitate thinking it's a toy.
 
Have you seen any of those Airsoft guns? They are 1:1 scale, battery operated-pneumatic, full AUTO, and fire little 6mm plastic or ceramic BBs. They are suppossed to have the same heft and feel of the real things. These 'toys' can run you about $400. :eek:!

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<A HREF="http://airsoftguns.com/" TARGET=_blank> http://airsoftguns.com/[/url]
http://www.747imports.com/
 
How well I remember. When I was a kid we could walk down the street with our BB guns on our way to a gully and shoot all day. It was common place for cops and locals to get together for some fun shootin. The prize in a raffle might be a rifle or shotgun displayed in the barber shop window. If your neighbors were gone for the afternoon it was common place to shut their windows if it started to rain. As for the phrase “it’s for the children” that meant parents would watch the kids until they were old enough to be responsible, and they were.
 
I remember when I was growing all I had were toy guns. I had some nice ones too. I remember my favorite one's were made by a company in Italy. They made several models and I had an M1 carbine and a Luger from them that actually had removable magazine's and took plastic strip caps that would eject when you fired it. Does anyone know what the situation is in other countries as far as toy guns are concerned?

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I AM NOT NUMBER! I AM A FREE MAN!
 
I wish I had bought one of those full auto BBguns that used a freon canister or compressed air.
We had good toy guns as kids until we were old enough to be trusted with BB guns. Wore out a few of those. never did 'put someone's eye out' or turn into a sociopathic mass murderer, not even an average run-of-the-mill murderer.
I did turn into a responsible, law-abiding gun nut tho.
 
The fully-auto BB gun which operated off a 14-oz freon canister or air compresser was known as the "LARC". Although I, of course, have absolutely no first-hand experience with one, I am told that one could substantially reduce the populations of sparrows/ starlings / pigeons which roosted on commercial buildings. I believe this was done in the early morning hours around daylight before the shoppers hit the city streets.
 
I remember when I was in middle school(the 70's) we had a riflery class..used 177 pellet guns..it was always one of the first gym classes to fill up...we had archery too.. Oh well.....I remember those bolt actions with the wooden bullet....I liked the spring loaded machine guns that had kind of a charging handle on the side and an orange plastic piece that bounced in and out of the barrel when you fired.. :) I had one of those...I also had a revolver that the cylinder unlocked and it took a ring of red caps...you had to "reload " just like a real gun...it even had a push rod that would "eject" the spent cap ring..
 
Well I am probably the last generation to have good toy guns. ( I turn 19 tomorrow! ) I remember those cool revolvers with the ring caps and the little automatics with the rolls of caps. My mother was anti-gun and never let me have a toy gun and I ticked off my dad a few times bugging him to let me have a BB gun. ( never got one though ). I did build them out of legos alot. I do remember bringing my GI Joes to elementary school all the time. Now days you can get expelled for that. Mom did let me have squirt guns though. All my freinds had toy guns and they let me borrow them all the time.

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"Guns don't kill people the government does", Rusty Shackleford.
http://www.fair.org
 
theprisoner, I had one of those Lugers too. Mine had a removable plastic silencer. My favorite was the ten-shot revolver which used the plastic "ring" of caps -- easier to speedload. :)

I also had a good collection of the Entertech "automatic" battery-powered water guns. By that time, the orange tips started showing up on guns.

One guy at an Insights training class brought a few toy guns -- he used them like the ASP red guns. Hell, when an ASP gun runs $50, a toy gun doesn't look half bad for weapons retention training. :)

I remember laughing at some of the dealers at gun shows selling toy guns, with signs saying "pre-ban AK47" and "buy them before they're banned". Well, they're not banned but I don't see too many realistic toy guns any more -- maybe they were right. :(

Justin

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Justin T. Huang, Esq.
late of Kennett Square, Pennsylvania
 
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned 'pop' guns. That's what we called them in the '50's. It looked like a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun, but when you cocked and 'fired' it... well... it made noise. Not really a 'pop'... more like a half strangled bark noise.

Being kids, we soon discovered that thrusting the muzzle into slightly wet clay soil and THEN cocking and firing - Voila! Instant dirt clod gun. :)

Rolls of caps were cool. We'd place an entire roll on the ground and detonate it with a hammer. Why have a little .45 when you can have a howitzer? :)

I'd tell you about the firecracker cannons we made, but that would be OT.

Hmmm... maybe a thread about "Toy guns modified for greater amusement"? :D

Cliff
 
After I bought my first handgun last August, my 3 year-old son went around the house pointing his finger and making "bang" noises. I decided to buy him a toy gun for his birthday. That is when I discovered that such toys are rare commodities these days. I would much rather have my son play with a toy Colt revolver than a super maxed out Star Wars take-over-the-universe style ray gun. I finally found an orange plastic replica of a 1911. It was red tagged dirt cheap so the toy store could unload them, never to sell them again. So now my son has a full-size replica semi-auto with a hammer that works when you pull the trigger.

What I really wanted was a dart gun that shot real darts and looked at least enough like a real gun to impress a 3 year-old. That is what I had when I was a kid. That and a stick that was vaguely rifle shaped that I carried with me in the woods when I played army.
 
It is no longer PC to own/give toy guns.

There was an incident here in Austria where a 15(?)YO took his dads revolver from the closet (it was behind some clothes, where kids are sure to find it) and shot people at school.

Another kid thought this was cool and brought his BB guns to school. Now the age limit to buy these has been raised to 14, accompanied by big stories in the media about kids might be shot if they have these...

I had a pistol with a strip of caps. The DAO trigger fed a new cap and the hammer chopped off the previous one, so there were no telltale bits of plastic protruding from the top. I now have a BB G17 and can hardly wait for my 3YO to start practice with it.
 
The good old days. Many of these toys sound familiar. I remember having a metal snubby with a swing out cylinder that took ring caps and it had a threaded barrel and detachable silencer.

Another one was I think called the Zebra or something like that. It was a PPK'ish looking gun that shot those vinyl pellets. Then there was a MP40-type gun that actually took a forward magazine that held about 10 plastic orange bullets. The one I had was black but unbelievably I saw one at the grocery store the other day; it was exactly the same except it was made of clear flourescent plastic.

How about those cap bombs that you threw and they "detonated" on impact. I also had a dart gun that looked like a 1911 and another one that looked like an automag.

Not necessarily a toy, but I remember Daisy (the air gun company) having some CO2 powered guns that looked/felt real. They took a magazine and you loaded the magazine with plastic shells just like brass. At the front of the shell you put a plastic BB, about .30. When you fired, the slide would retract and expell the "spent" plastic case. I never had one but wanted one. Anyone remember that one?
 
A few thoughts:

How long until some BG's think of putting orange tips on their guns to make the cops hesitate?

If you owned one of those full-auto pellet guns powered by Freon, you'd be out of luck since the EPA won't let you buy the cannisters any more.

Toy guns are just another object to blame for people who don't want to address the real issue, which is a parent's responsibility to raise their kids properly. The Bible says "bring up a child in the way it should go" and Crosby Stills & Nash say "teach your children well", and they're both correct.

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Dave
Deep in the Florida Swamps
 
I know people from Sweden and Romania who resorted to asking friends from Easstern Europe to send in well-made toys guns for kids. They said US toys are getting to be entirely inane. Once thse kids grow up slightly, I will take them shooting real guns.
 
I.......HAD.......experience with those lousy freon guns. They simply blew the BB's out like a stream. No power, just a mess. MAYBE they would kill a sparrow, but they were mostly useless. Can do as good with a mouthful of BB's and a straw.

Don't swallow, kids.
 
I was in Wal-Mart yesterday, and happened by the air rifle/bb pistol section. Wow! They had some REALLY realistic looking BB pistols. One looked just like a S&W revolver. Another looked about 90% like a Colt 45, and yet another was styled almost exactly like a S&W Chief's Special. The one that caught MY eye, though -

was a CO2 "Powerline" that looked 99% EXACTLY like a Glock practical/tactical 34/35. The grip angle was slightly different, but eveerything else was there. The stippling on the front of the trigger guard, a faux accesory rail, the takedown button, the slide release, the mag release, even the sights were really, really close. Of course, it only said "authentic styling" on the package, but the Wally-World tag said "BB pistol - glock".

They were about 30$. Got me thinking!



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"Oh yeah? Well I talk LOOOUDLY! And I carry a BIIIGGER stick! And I'll use it, too." -Yoesemite Sam
 
Jthuang, yes I remember the silencer! This thread got me thinking and I went looking in my closet and found I still had a couple toy guns in there including one of the full auto "Entertech" water guns. I also found a flintlock rifle made wood and steel. I remember it had cork balls that you would stuff down the barrel with rod that came with it and then you would put regular red paper caps on the powder tray, cock the hammer, pull the trigger and the force from the blast would be directed through a hole in the tray forcing the cork ball out with pretty good velocity. Sbryce, they still make that dart gun you refered to if it is the one I am thinking. It also shoots BB's and .177 caliber pellets. I would check K-mart or Wal-mart. It is made by a company called Marksman.

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I AM NOT A NUMBER! I AM A FREE MAN!
 
I had a derringer that formed the front of a rather large belt buckle. What you did was push out your stomach against the back of the belt buckle and the derringer would swing out and shoot a grey plastic bullet from a cartridge, primed with a green "sticky cap." Do you remember these? I think they were inspired by the TV series "Palladin."

BTW, this was around 1960, when adults were not sheep, kids knew the difference between make believe and real life, and Clinton was still in high school peeking into the girsl locker room.
 
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