Red Ryder BB Gun

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The Red Ryder BB Gun, is a BB gun made by Daisy Outdoor Products and introduced in 1938. Based on the comic strip and later television and movie cowboy Red Ryder, the BB gun is still in production despite the fact that the comic strip was cancelled in 1963, and it is arguably the most famous BB gun in American history. The 2006 MSRP for the Red Ryder model is US$44.99.

Two Red Ryder BB Guns in box. These are a relatively recent reissue. The boxes promote the gun as being "just like the one your Dad had!"

1 Design
2 Popular culture
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Design

The Red Ryder BB Gun is a lever-action, spring piston air gun with a smoothbore barrel, adjustable iron sights, and a gravity feed magazine with a 650 BB capacity. It differs from the standard Daisy lever action BB guns by the addition of an engraved stock, a saddle ring, and a leather thong on the lever. A youth model airgun, the BB gun produces velocities of about 280 feet per second with standard steel BBs. The effective range is fairly short, about 10 yards (9 m), after which the low velocity and inaccuracy of the smoothbore barrel makes hitting the target difficult. BB guns are shot competitively at distances of 5 yards (4.5 m), but the rudimentary open sights on the Red Ryder make it impractical for competition, and it is primarily a plinking airgun. It is made of steel and nickel.

[edit] Popular culture

The Red Ryder BB gun was prominently featured in the popular 1980s film A Christmas Story, where the main character is desperate to get one but is constantly thwarted with the warning "You'll shoot your eye out". The movie's fictional BB gun, described as the "Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing which tells time," does not correspond to any production model nor even a prototype; the Red Ryder featured in the movie was constructed by the production crew to match author Jean Shepherd's story (which may be artistic license, but was the configuration Shepard claimed to remember).^[1]

In the computer RPG series Fallout the Red Ryder is available as a weapon. The normal version does the lowest amount of damage for a ranged weapon in the game and is approximately equivalent to an actual Red Ryder. However, the game also includes a (fictional) "limited edition" version which has more firepower than the game's high power pistols and .223 hunting rifle.