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| Basically useless in a firefight, couldn't even shoot your eye out. |
One of the more ill-advised things we got up to was simulating war by fighting with BB guns. If you don't know much about BB guns what you need to know is that there is a wide range of BB guns. You have your single pump spring action, Daisy Red Ryder, that is your baby BB gun. It shoots so slowly that you can actually see the BB leave the gun and miss what you were aiming at. Being shot by a Red Ryder is more or less like being snapped by a rubber band, It doesn't hurt anything it just stings a little, really bad.
It is is nothing compared to any of the pump-up type BB guns, that come as either pistols or rifles. They can pump up, as the name implies, usually from 1 to 10 times and the more you pump in the more powerful the shot becomes. Up to going through jeans and just into the skin, a ten pump shot will ruin your day.
Further up the line you have your BB/Pellet guns which shoot at near the speed of gunpowder guns and is actually capable of killing small animals. You're going to want to steer clear of getting shot with that one, especially in your tender parts.
To play this game we would set up a war zone and teams in a vacant lot or something where we would have little foxholes dug out and some other war necessaries. It was almost anything goes out there and the only real rule was that no one with a more powerful gun was supposed to pump more than 1 time. That way everyone was on equal footing.
I didn't have my own gun so I was always stuck borrowing the lame one pump little Red Ryder, a stupid gun. Besides being inaccurate and weak, the Red Ryder would misfire about every other time. It was hard to get a BB down into the firing chamber in the heat of battle. The magazine ran lengthwise to the barrel and you had to hold the gun up at about a 45° angle and then cock it. I had about a slim chance that a BB was in the chamber. Occasionally, I would test fired it to see if I got one in the chamber and either there was just and empty puff or out shot the BB. This was not a good test because either way you needed to reload in renewed ignorance.
We would be out fighting, doing military-type stuff yelling things, making plans, traitoring, shooting everything. Every once in a while I would hear somebody scream, a lot. They had been shot with a BB and it they were letting everyone know. If whoever got shot had a multi-pump gun, would start multi-pumping it in direct violation of the accords. Then it was time to flee the comfort of the foxhole while you heard the ominous, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. While it was possible that there were 10 individual guns being cocked in series, the more logical explanation was that someone was going off reservation over there and just pumped their gun a flesh-rending 10 times.
That usually signaled the end of the game and we would all hastily decamp. Sometimes someone wouldn't make it out in time and get shot. The BB would be lodged beneath the skin and they would have to pop it out like a little steel zit. The important thing is that shot or not you could never tell mom or they would do something rash like not let little kids shoot BB guns at each other anymore. Moms hate fun.
