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Comment by ransom1538 | Hacker News Reader

I remember watching a British police reality show and they found a bb gun in a persons home. The police, so unfamiliar with firearms, thought it was real and couldn't figure out how to "unload the rounds". Soon, they brought in an officer from their version of SWAT that quickly laughed it off.

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Had a Russian friend who was horrified I called them “BB guns.” He insisted they are “pneumatic rifles” and treated them the same as any other firearm.

The pneumatic description can be accurate. But I'm not aware of a BB gun with rifling. My understanding is that BBs, being spherical, don't work well with rifling.

The Girardoni air rifle was used in military service from the late 18th through early 19th centuries, and saw civilian use for some time after that. It was a very high-tech weapon for the time, and while finicky and expensive offered some unique advantages and was quite deadly. The Lewis & Clark expedition famously used a couple.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girardoni_air_rifle

I really wanted to stop and say thank you.

This was amazing find. I really am a nerd in this subject but had no idea compressed air was used in the 18th century. This really changed my thinking and historical perspective. You blew my Sunday that I will forgive. I will blow all next weekend trying to figure out why compressed air didn't catch on wtf. From my (limited!!) research the valves were super expensive and took an amazing amount of craftsmanship - which didn't allow for mass production (eg Brown Bess).

There seem to be two types of air rifles in the US: BB guns, which shoot BBs, and pellet guns, which are rifled and shoot a pellet that look more like a bullet.

There are all kinds of variants, including BB guns that are fully automatic. https://www.airgundepot.com/automatic-bb-guns.html

Air rifles 200 years ago were so effective (quiet, 30 round magazine) that Napoleon supposedly ordered that anyone carrying one be summarily executed. https://notorc.blogspot.com/2006/08/short-history-of-air-rif...

It was common in the US to do "plinking" with a BB gun at various targets, including windows of abandoned buildings, tin cans, and the unfortunate small animal. Probably still is in more rural areas. Anyway, different tradition than a weapon of war.

I was surprised to find that my UK friend thought Airsoft guns (plastic pellets) were BB guns (metal, round pellets). He was shocked to hear my brother and I would shoot each other with Airsoft guns when we were younger, thinking they were metal rounds. Not sure if this is a cultural difference or if he was simply mistaken.

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