Guns I shouldn't have sold

by Tom Gaylord

The first gun I can remember selling was also the first one I shouldn't have sold. I had wanted a BB gun in the worst way for several years, but my mother was adamantly opposed to the idea. She wasn't anti-gun; we had several in the house. But years before she had been terrorized by neighbor boys who shot at our windows with BB guns, so I had to do the penance. When she finally relented, it started a cavalcade of misadventures that turned me into the airgunner I am today.


The box promised a lot!


Mostly plastic and all toy, Wamo's "Kruger" BB pistol was a poor joke.

My first BB gun was a joke. It was a cap-firing Wamo Kruger that used the power of an exploding cap to propel the BB. Only exploding caps don't HAVE much power, so of course, my gun had none. It usually wouldn't shoot the BB out the barrel, but a couple of times I triple-loaded it and launched a coppery sphere of death all of 20 feet! I believe the inventor went on to join NASA and run the Redstone rocket project.

Finally my mother broke down and allowed me to buy a real BB gun. One of my older sister's boyfriends owned the most-desired BB gun of all kid-dom - a Daisy number 25 pump with engraved receiver. He let me have it for five dollars and the improved good will of my sister, which I don't know that he got. For a few days I was in heaven! I owned the most powerful BB gun on our block (there were only three others) and I flaunted it.


This engraved Daisy Number 25 pump has the optional model 300 scope mounted. It's not enough to fill the void.

Then hell froze and my BB gun lost all power. BBs only dribbled out, as if to announce that my fun time was over. I panicked and tried to disassemble the gun to see what was the matter, thereby creating a basket case, only I put all the parts into a shopping bag. After a week I grew disgusted of the ordeal and sold the gun for a quarter to a friend, just to get it out of my sight.

Not long afterward, my "friend" showed up with his two-bit BB gun shooting as hard as ever. It turns out you have to oil BB guns from time to time and I never had because nobody told me. His dad knew just what to do and in no time had all the parts back where they belonged. A few drops of oil down the barrel and "poof!" Gaylord's a dope!

I have never forgotten that gun, which I believe I would own today had things gone differently. In its place as a poor substitute I have all the major variations of Daisy number 25 pumps made in Plymouth, Michigan. Together, those eight guns fill about 5 percent of the hole that was left in my childish heart.