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Comment by h2odragon | Hacker News Reader

not high velocity, not high accuracy, but they can be effective. small prototypes capable of delivering a withering stream of BB's are well within the capabilities of the misguided teenager.

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Sounds awesome :) Are you speaking from personal experience?

We had centrifugal pellet guns at roadside carnivals 30+ years ago, glass bottles were the targets. You could barely hit the target from 25 feet away because the power simply wasn't there, and so many times those pellets simply ricocheted right back at you. Those got replaced with the more 'fair' and powerful tube/air-fed rifles which got used to shoot out a star on a piece of paper (which in and of itself is a bit of a scam if you don't know the trick.)

The trick being to shoot around the star I presume? That’s the only “trick” I’ve ever heard of - curious if there is another.

I believe it is a few things. Light finger to get single shots versus repeated. First few shots to figure out how bad the sights are. Shoot around the star until you have a good perimeter. Shoot the center to pop it out.

Though you can find credible marksmen that know all this, yet fail to win. It's rigged.

It is rigged, but it's the paper targets (star diagram). The paper intentionally is strong enough that it is highly improbable that any bb/pellet gun will have the force to knock out the remaining 20% of the outline of the star no matter how accurate the shooter is. The inner part of the target will begin to fold on purpose.

I imagine brushless motors and Lipo batteries could power something a bit more fierce nowadays.

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