Airguns

I know that this forum is hardly a hotbed of NRA members but I just bought an air rifle to do some target shooting in my basement and figured I’d see if anybody else is into this.

The gun I bought is a Crosman 2100 .177

Any advice or ideas? Things to try? Safety tips? Practice techniques?

I don’t really think you’ll shoot your eye out mike but for some reason I just couldn’t resist voting that way.

Make sure your city doesn’t have an ordinance against discharge of airguns. Some of these are relics from the “you’ll shoot your eye out” days, and some are new, brought on by misuse of Airsoft and paintball guns. It’s no fun to get a misdemeanor charge in your own backyard.

Well I’m in the basement so it doesn’t count right?

:?

Target shooting in your basement?
You can get steel box traps that you can use for target practice. It makes it easier to keep all the spent pellets in one place, and it funnels all the shots into a safe area.
If you’ve got kids around, maybe some orange reflective tape around the barrel, just in case. I haven’t looked at air rifles in a long time, but back then they were fairly realistic. As well, trigger locks and a lockbox to put the gun in are good ideas.

What he said.

I had a .177 for shooting parrots when I was a kid. Of course - being 14/15 we also shot the little gnome toys out of the Kinder Suprise eggs. Also I shot a cereal box I had placed on a pile of wood chips, which the pellet went through bouncing off our shed and back into my right shoulder. It only stung a little bit but I’m glad it wasn’t my eye. Make sure no one screws with the site either - my step dad did that and we use to hit the wooden beams which causes the pellets, once again, to bounce back and go whizzing past our heads ( It took us about a half hour of testing to get it right ).

I recommend shooting paper targets against a very thick peice of foam.

When I was a kid my dad made me a basement BB target by stuffing a big cardboard box with newspaper — the papers were laid flat and packed in tight, not crumpled up in balls. It worked great, with no ricochets or anything like that. When I ran out of BBs (months or maybe years later) he opened the box and shook the papers out so that (most of) the BBs fell into the box, and when I’d refilled my gun he filled the box with fresh papers. I highly recommend the method.

Sometimes I taped paper targets to the box, but it was the box from an Iwo Jima toy soldier playset, so it was more fun to aim at the soldiers and tanks in the pictures on the front and back.

Air guns aren’t usually very loud, are they? I woudl assume they would be fine, especially in doors. The real concern is ricoches, as has been mentioned. I actually bounced a BB off of a mud ground an into my step brother’s eye (it hit the sack below the eye, luckily). You would be suprised just how easy it is to have one of those pellets or BBs bounce back at you. Make sure you are shooting INTO something that will absorb it and offer no chance of it bouncing out.

My setup is as follows:

Target on cardboard in front of cardboard box trap stuffed with newspaper in front of very thick hanging blanket.

:D

I think all you need to do is what Christmas Story. The movie really covers everthing you need to know.

Well plus its a great flick too.

I have no experience with air guns, but I suggest you wear eye protection the first few times you try it, until you know where things go.

Definitely wear eye protection. In high school I was on the JROTC’s marksmanship team, which was with air guns. We’d shoot at traps 30 or 40 feet away with the back sides tilted down to minimize reflection, etc. and still there would be a predictable stream of pellets coming back at us. Hey even the kind of eye protection you get at Home Depot for $5 will do, and it is worth every penny when it comes to your sight.

I recommend you wear eye protection even after the first few times. 8)

  • Alan

But never will you actually look as cool as that. ^

Are Airsoft guns considerably different? I know they now use ABS plastic pellets, as opposed to the old copper (?) ones. I’ve found myself drooling over Airsoft guns quite a bit in the last couple years, mostly because of all the replicas they make. Obviously, real versions of many of the rifles they have cannot be had, legally, so this seems like the next best thing for someone fascinated by firearms, but not as much interested in firing.

Also, I remember seeing replicas of a Colonial Space Marines pulse rifle with working digital counter and Robocop’s firearm, which I instantly fell in love with

eye protection? you guys are sissies.

what you do with an airgun is pump it once, and then go shoot the party guests of your loud neighbors who are congragating outside his house at 3am from your window. but you wrap your rifle with a towel, and only point the very end up it out the window, to muffle the sound.

so you shoot them in the ass, and they think they are being stung by bees, and because you only pumped it once, it doesnt break the clothing or the skin, and they disperse and leave, and you can get to sleep again.

the end.

Ah fun with airguns, shooting the wildlife, toys, any glass we can find,including what we later found out, were the panes on an unassembled greenhouse. A friend even shot himself in the foot at point blank range (to see how much it hurt a la jackass but 20 yrs ago), with hilarious results… for us anyway. He wasnt the only person i knew who got shot either, by accident or purpose i remember seeing a few pellet wounds back in the day, the local pikey kids and weapons dont mix.

Just as well real guns arent easily available in the UK eh?

You can still be spotted. What you do is get a chair, turn off all lights, back up to the farthest end of the room away from the window but where you have a good angle, and THEN start shooting. If you have an exterior light, turn it on, as it tends to provide a natural blind spot.

I had a rather rich friend. Leading to their large country house was a long and winding lane. One of his big brothers had the room on the top floor facing the lane.
He would stand with his airgun and snipe at us, when we visited!
Crazy motherfucker was years later committed when the police had to get him down from a rooftop where he was with a shotgun threatening to kill somebody… most likely himself.

But he did give me a kinda twitchy feeling towards airguns.

I was hoping you’d comment on this, playingwithknives.