That familyâs level of fun is fast approaching a creepy threshold. Hide your pets!
What a shitty tone.
Well, yes, guns are fun. Author must have lived his whole life in a little box outside of the real world to write such patronizing crap.
If you subscribe to an ideology set that is chastising you at every step, wants to outlaw most of fun (including guns, firecrackers, and other goodies) or at least regulate and paperwork all the fun out of it, and polices your language to the point that every sentence feels like walking on eggshells, you have to compensate for it somehow.
Also, the author did not consider the possibility that the kids themselves could join the fray and build the thing together, for yet more fun.
A random, related, thought: a rapid-fire BB full-auto gun, using a hose from the shop compressor for the propellant, fed from either a hopper (for round projectiles) or, for yet more fun, a belt. Plinkplinkplinkplinkplink!
(Another random thought. For those cone-shaped BBs with hollow back, what about loading them with a tracer composition and light them up with a laser during acceleration in barrel? Could make outdoor night shooting even better.)
Swap one dart gun and suddenly I want this in my living room.
I mean it was 1959, why didnât they just go watch some you tube, or go rent a movie, or play a video game. If they wanted to make something surely firing up their 3D printer for a fun evening printing knobs never gets boring, they could have even gotten an arduino and built yet another internet enabled plant moisture meter, not solder there. What a bunch of yokels.
At some point most kids in the 80s wished they could play âDuck Huntâ with live ammo, if only to teach that dog some goddamn respect.
I was a kid in 1959 and actually had a friend who had something like this (built by his dad and older brother). I can assure you, we were not bored after the first 30 minutes. Far from it. We played with it all the time when the weather didnât allow for outside play (yes, kids actually did that back in the day).
In fact, I donât remember being bored when I was a kid or ever lacking in things to do with my spare time. And none of that time was ever managed or planned by the adults in our lives. I doubt if youâd find many kids today whoâll be able to say that when they grow up.
I think the author needs a big olâ hug. HUGS
Heâs all over the map, first insinuating that plinking BBs at targets leads to animal torture, and then lamenting how much more hard core todayâs simulated violence is.
Back to the original topic - holy crap that thing is awesome. Low moments? It requires carpentry and electrician and marksmanship skills to make and use. Like the holy trinity cool skills. I had a bullet trap BB target made of a card board box, paper target, and old jeans when I was a kid. You could sit on the porch and target practice and recover the BBs. Moving reactive targets would have been awesome.
I guess carpentry could lead to sawing up road kill, and then using your knowledge of electricity to try to animate them again, but I digress. Maybe itâs best we stay inside and read a book. Nothing too unsettling though. Maybe a color book. With blunt crayons.
Right, because shooting at a mechanical target gallery with a BB gun in a healthy home environment is what makes sociopaths.
/s
I think I"m going to go with my first thought when I read your article: âfuck your article.â What a bunch of un-supported, anti-Maker, anti-fun crap. Do you really believe what you wrote or did you loose a bet and have to write the most ridiculous, specious, click baity post you could come up with?
And to top it all off, this is pretty much a re-hash of Maker Mayhem part 5, but in that one he at least didnât imply that using it would result in your kids turning into crazed delinquents.
Low moments in DIY always makes me feel bad for the author.
Take a marginally fun but slightly red-necky by both time and proximity from âTownâ and suddenly we get this superior deconstruction of some pretty useful and fun DIY projects.
I know few people who would read BB who donât have even a passing interest in firearms, psychotropics, airguns, explosives, jet turbines, chainsaws, etc.
It is ok to see fun in stuff, even if it appears to be similar to an object worshipped by a distant and perhaps disliked social grouping; even if there is an intense debate on how much control a society should place on the individual choice over ownership of the thing.
And that one was at least about something more than a bit questionable, making tiny backstop for shooting high powered rifles in your basement (the lack of ear protection doesnât help either :-0 )
This is a solid maker project. Using it indoors is where problem lies, and thatâs just safety thatâs common sense now, not necessarily then. Itâs totally common for people to go âplinkingâ at tin cans, it makes for fun target practice, but then you need to go out and pick the cans up. And it keeps it fun shooting little ducks or whatnot, instead of targets depicting terrorists or criminals or other humans.
Written by someone with no real friends who is desperately trying to show everyone how cynical and hip he can be. There are more important things than a seat at the cool table.
At least itâs safer than the macramĂ© version.
One thing stands out from my childhood experience with BB rifles: ricochets. There is no guarantee that BBs shot at that cool DIY carnival shooting gallery wonât ricochet right back at the shooter. Eye protection is a must these days - for reals, not just because it is all hyper cautious and stuff.
I think the Popsicle stick version could be fun, though.
