patrick.net

You'll poke your eye out with that thig!

Did your husband get the Go Go Dancer leg lamp?

Ironman says

Those sound like 177 pellets for a traditional bb/pellet rifle. The AREN'T the same thing as airsoft.

That's exactly right. The box said .177 caliber and the picture of the pellet was like nothing I had seen before. Thank you for clarifying. The thing that confused me is the description of "air rifle." And it was in the same section as the airsoft guns. I almost got it for him until I noticed that the "bullets" were different.

Ironman says

Hmm... That's the same thing I told my mother when she was watching me.. but when she wasn't.... :)

I keep all the pellets. So, he has to come to me when he needs more. He's allowed to play with the airsoft gun unsupervised as long as it's not loaded. If he wants to load it, he has to come to me. It seems to be working. He's eleven, so he's not yet smarter than I am. No doubt, that will change.

Ironman says

Is there such a thing that's an airsoft sniper rifle that looks big and bad, but uses the same little plastic bbs as the handgun?

http://www.hobbytron.com/AirsoftAssaultRifleGunAEGWAA10CH3181.html

http://www.dickssportinggoods.com/family/index.jsp?categoryId=4414550

Thank you!! I was beginning to wonder if what he wants even exists.

Tenpoundbass says

You'll poke your eye out with that thig!

I make him wear goggles. And he has to get the pellets from me... so he cannot use it without me knowing about it. I lectured him a lot about eye loss. He also has to wear jeans, a long sleeve shirt, and face mask under the goggles. I knew a kid in high school who lost his eye with a BB gun. That's actually my worst fear about all this. That, and him accidentally hitting one of my beloved dogs. Which is why he cannot use it anywhere near them.

You need to keep the gun under your control, not just pellet if it is a real air rifle. Pellets are easy to acquire.

The .177 inch diameter pellet air rifle comes in many different kinds, the power of which are dependent on muzzle velocity. The gun's packaging usually indicate muzzle velocity.

Some air rifles can have muzzle velocity as low as 300FPS (foot per second). 300FPS is enough to blind an eye.
Some air rifles can have muzzle velocity as high as 1200 or even 1800 fps. That is enough to kill a squirrel, punching through body, both entry and exit!

For comparison, M16 rifle (army combat rifle) puts out a bullet measuring about .223 inch diameter at muzzle velocity around 3000FPS.

Boys (and girls) should learn how to use guns, but parents should be in charge of gun safety.

He also should read up on gun safety websites before handling the gun. Basic things such as never look into a gun barrel or point the barrel at anyone.

I'm not sure I like the air soft plastic pellet model for one very important reason: their "safe" pellet leads to kids disrespecting the gun and leads to maybe shooting at inappropriate targets like people and animals cuz hey, it won't really hurt them!
The first rule of gun safety is to never point it at a person. I've shot a single shot variant of the .177 rifle and i can say it is quite accurate: much better for target practice than any plastic pellet or round pellet gun. That makes it both fun and good for real practice. I'd say double down on the gun safety and get him this real air gun.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/mrAwb9ptu9U

turtledove says

He really into military things. He's a Young Marine.

My advice would be go with it. Encourage it but in a responsible way. Find a rifle club where he can join and learn how to shoot as well as how to properly handle, clean and respect a weapon. Feel good that he has something that he is interested in, encourage it, feel proud that the interest is NOT in crack cocaine or meth (yeah, okay so I exaggerate a bit). There is so much that he could be doing that would get him in trouble ... this doesn't fall in that category. Let him try military school, kids make so much worse decisions now days that I think you're lucky.

I'm guessing that everyone on this thread had a bb/pellet guns as a kid and that none of us were the worse for it.

As stated we were also given some training in real guns.

Besides in the future he will be glad he had had this experience:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/x9iYvyffAh4

So far all the advice has come from the right.
For fair and balanced advice, some liberals need to chime in here...

Oh, he'd love it if I got him a real air rifle. The problem is, outside of Young Marines, no one in this house is qualified to teach him about guns. Maybe I should talk to one of the YM dads (several of them are military themselves). I don't mind my son learning all this stuff. He takes it very seriously. Just yesterday in the car, his sister took his YM hat and put it on her brother's head. He said, "I'm not allowed to wear it. First, I'm inside. Second, I'm out of uniform." Then, he said something about how wearing only part of the uniform trivializes the uniform.

I am not kidding when I say that this kid takes this stuff seriously. Obviously, I'm supportive because I take him to all the events. This is the first activity he's ever done that he's so excited about, he cannot sleep the night before (and he's been in it for half a year). I'm thrilled to see the interest level is so high on something that isn't a video game! I want him to be able to practice. I think it's great that HE wants to be really good at something. I'm just going to have to make an effort to befriend the YM dads, and learn what they do and where they go to let their boys practice. Obviously, I don't want to get him the wrong rifle to practice with... What would be the point? But I get uncomfortable getting him something that could hurt him or others (and metal pellets make me extra nervous) when, clearly, I know so little about them. I'm not even sure if the backyard would even be big enough for an air rifle.

turtledove says

He really into military things. He's a Young Marine. I don't know where he gets this from. I've never talked it up.

boys in general love love love guns and military things. the love of weapons is genetic, inborn, selected for by millenia of militarily successful guys having more surviving children than those that were not. it's not even necessarily about attacking. simply defending your village from attackers meant you were more likely to live and reproduce.

glad you're going with it for now. my own son was really into airsoft for a couple of years, attended the huge airsoft battles they do, then it faded away when he discovered airplanes. planes were his thing in high school. he just got his pilot's license and started college. we don't hear about guns anymore.

SoftShell says

So far all the advice has come from the right.

For fair and balanced advice, some liberals need to chime in here...

here's an article from pbs, which is definitely toward the liberal side:

http://www.pbs.org/parents/raisingboys/aggression05.html

basically agrees that it's genetic. the flaw in the article is that is uses "parent" to mean mother. a father doesn't worry that his son loves guns because a father knows the feeling exactly, and that it's perfectly normal and basically a good instinct.

Thousands of cats agree airsoft guns suck.

Ceffer says

Thousands of cats agree airsoft guns suck

Died laughing! Hehe.

On this note, turtledove, don't freak out if you catch him downing moths/butterflies, or going after lizards, or some such. As soon as you see that behavior, reinforce not at pets, and not at birds. Smaller birds are pretty fragile. The last thing you need is some jackass calling whatever powers that be because your son downed a tiny bird. It's become more common to label all these pretty typical male maturing hunting tendencies as "torturing animals and sings of a mass murderer in the making".

Sounds like you are being pretty wise and cautious. Keep it paper as much as you can. You can find neat targets that aren't people/torso silhouettes, as well as targets that react on impact. Making your own targets is fun too.

Get ready for him and his friends to shoot each other with air soft, laser, and paint ball though. Dang skippy. Protect the eyes.

And do NOT ALLOW HIM TO REMOVE THE ORANGE TIP off of the rifle. Death can be the result. He seems responsible, so that is unlikely.

EBGuy says

And do NOT ALLOW HIM TO REMOVE THE ORANGE TIP off of the rifle.

Believe it or not, he told me how bad it is when people want to remove the orange tip. I already knew, but I thought it was kind of funny that he was the one to say it, first. It was one of the topics at his Young Marines meetings. The guys who run these things are really pretty awesome. I'm kind of a soft touch parent. I listen to the excuses and such. These guys don't take any shit. AND THE KIDS RESPOND!

At the first meeting, the Marines guy who is in charge (I don't know his rank, because I kind don't notice those things) said to the boys something like, "You might not always listen to your parents, and you might think that you don't always have to listen to your teachers... BUT YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME!" My son is terrified of this guy finding out that he didn't do something he's supposed to (in a good way - he wants his approval). I just have to suggest that I'm gunna tell and that's it. They did the same sort of thing in Taekwondo, but it wasn't nearly as effective. And he's a black belt, so we did Taekwondo for a long time. But he didn't want their approval as much. He wants this guy's approval. I think he's going to be the honor grad, which means he starts a rank higher than the other boys. Not to count my chickens before they hatch, but he really is the best one out there. This, coming from a kid who at soccer wanted to be the goalie so he could climb the goal posts! He was always the kid who opted to sit out of innings in baseball. He was the kid who didn't like rugby because the other kids were touching him roughly. He didn't like swimming if the pool looked dirty. He's pretty good at tennis, but he didn't love it. You have no idea how long and hard I've searched for an activity that excites him. Eleven years! I want him to be his best. It's moments like this I wish I weren't a girl who spent her childhood doing ballet, gymnastics, and cheerleading... and I wish his dad cared about something other than writing papers for medical journals. Don't get me wrong, I love my husband... but this just isn't his thing. It's sad that it's more my thing than his because I suck at it. So, I'm trying really hard to learn about stuff I never gave a second thought to before a few months ago. I feel a little like a single parent on this one.

Rew says

Died laughing! Hehe.

Me, too. My daughter learned that if you warm eggs that you buy at the store that they might hatch into chickens. Our cats think it's a fantastic idea, we should give it a try, and it will more than make up for the male child who likes those sucky airsoft guns.

Not to be an asshole, but on the other hand this country is becoming entirely to militarized and the empire thing is getting old.

The more I look into the atrocities this country commits, 250k dead non-combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan, 500k children die in Iraq because of an embargo in the mid 90s, the complete treason of Vietnam, etc. I almost think this country is becoming like pre WW2 Germany with all of the hype about the military.

I understand he is a kid but at some point I hope this country's culture will change from war mongering imperialism.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/RM0uvgHKZe8

Without india's and china's cooperation in reducing global warming pollutants, we are all doomed.
Invasion of these two polluters to take over and control their industrial exhaust fumes may be the only option on the table if they refuse to cooperate.
Time to recalculate the pluses/minuses of 'empire building'...

indigenous says

Not to be an asshole, but on the other hand this country is becoming entirely to militarized and the empire thing is getting old.

They will have to hurry up because the new world order is coming, I wonder if it centers around the secretary of states:

Investments
Madeleine Albright is a co-investor with Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild and George Soros, in a $350 million investment vehicle called Helios Towers Africa, which intends to buy or build thousands of mobile phone towers in Africa.[89][90]

But I'm sure Hillary was much better...

Do they make a M-134 air soft version?