Minute Of Aluminum - or - Cans Beware

I have two daughters, a teen and a pre-teen. They are just now getting into going shooting with me. But there are a number of drawbacks to getting them out shooting, and these apply to many of us.

• Cost - Ammo in 9mm is pretty pricey, the range is about 20-25 miles away so there's two gallons of gas involved
• Time - It's tough to get everyone together to go out to the range, given that it is over an hour of round-trip driving, only works in daylight hours (it's outdoors), and it's altogether inconvenient
• Noise - hey, shooting a 9mm is kind of loud and scary for teenage girls.
  

So, I noticed, hanging on the gun rack, my dad had an old (and by old, I mean old, beat up, broken down, and barely working) Daisy 840 air rifle that my brother and I had when I was a kid. I took it home, made sure it worked, jammed a spare screw up under the rear sight where the ramp was missing, and then set up some cans. The girls had a blast out there shooting cans in the back yard. At about 35 feet, they were dead-eye accurate. My wife came out and even had some fun out there.

Later that weekend I did a little service on the beater old BB rifle and basically discovered that it's a basket case. It works, it's accurate, but it's a pain. The bolt is really stiff and hard to operate. You have to load it manually every time and this is anything but predictable or reliable. The girls don't really like pumping and loading it for every shot. So it's time for a semi-auto BB or pellet rifle and/or pistol.

The cool thing about air guns is that in many towns in Texas, you can shoot an air rifle in your own yard. A piece of plywood makes an effective backstop. You can get reactive targets from the recycle bin, and each can will take about 100 rounds before it has to be replaced. It is fun and helps you learn good sight technique, not to flinch or anticipate the recoil, etc. I think a BB pistol would be an excellent practice tool for those new to shooting pistols, to help with sight picture and trigger control. A pellet rifle is just plain fun to shoot. No ear protection required! And ammo is very cheap. Even counting the cost of CO2 cartridges in a higher-powered pellet rifle, it is cheaper to shoot than .22LR bought in 550-round bulk packs.

So after some rather overwhelming research, I discovered that air guns are a big topic. Some air rifles get extremely expensive, and there are people who are just as crazy about air rifles as some are about "real" firearms. Semi-auto style BB or pellet rifles are rarer than hen's teeth. But to boil it down very simply:

• Pellets are more accurate than BBs.
• Almost all BB or pellet rifles require you to manually load a BB or pellet into the breech with some type of action be it a bolt or some other action
• For rifles, the common types are spring-piston (Red Ryder and most high power pellet hunting rifles), pneumatic pump (like my Daisy 840 or most multi-pumps like you might have shot as a kid), and CO2. You have to cock or pump everything other than CO2. CO2 cartridges can get expensive over time.
  
• There is only one sporter-style (that is, traditional-looking) semi-auto pellet rifle on the market. It's the Crosman 1077
  
• To get a BB rifle that doesn't require manual loading of each round, then your only choice is Daisy. Maybe you like it in pink. They are accurate enough to hit soda cans at 10 yards.
  
• To be accurate at 20 yards or more, a pellet must be going about 600fps. To plink soda cans at 10 yards, about 300fps BBs will do the trick.
  
• Semi-auto style BB or pellet pistols using CO2 are pretty common. You can a Daisy that looks like a 1911 at Wal Mart for $30 or less.
  

So last weekend I found a lightly used Crosman 1077 complete with a ton of accessories and ammo on Craigslist and snapped it up. Now I am on the hunt for the right pistol, and I think the M&P BB pistol is the one I want since it is very fast (480fps) and has a feel very much like my Sigma including the sights and trigger. Be forewarned: you may quickly get over your head when you start shopping for an air gun. Some of these folks are really nuts.

UPDATE: I bought that M&P pistol. The first one had a broken mag catch out of the box and it had to be returned. The second one had a problem where most of the time, when you pulled the trigger it would not fire, but it would fire when you began to release the trigger. I took it back for a refund. Two strikes is all it took. On the other hand, I am digging my 1077 quite a bit.