Daisy M25: a field of fun

Dollar for dollar, airgun users have more fun than their cartridge firing counterparts. I discovered this about 4 years ago whilst living in a large city apartment in which I also had a home office. Owning firearms can be akin to having a trophy cabinet in your home: we can look at them fondly, take them out to clean and polish and show them off to our buddies but more often than not they go unused. Unless you’re one of the lucky few that has property and your own range, or your profession involves reviewing weapons on Youtube, then most of us are simply armchair pros cum wannabe daily shooters. Feeling like that in my city apartment I decided to buy a Daisy Model25 thinking it might provide small distraction over the occasional lunch hour. Well, let me tell you, that little pop gun changed the way I think about APW’s (again the acronym, Air Powered Weapons). I ended up making an indoor range from a plastic tote, which I turned on it’s side, cut the top half of the lid and bent it down into a shelf extending into the tote. I took a stack of old newspapers, bound them together and stood that wad up as a backstop inside. Then I made little cardboard targets and sat them on top of the shelf to shoot off. I bought the Daisy with one container of 2,500 bb’s and thanks to recycling from the tote, have never had to replenish my ammo stocks, nor spend a nickel on cleaning supplies. Air guns are for the most part self-cleaning so a dab (of 3-in-1) will do ya! Overall cost for 4.2 years of range funnery? $37.99 all-in. The only mishaps were when a bb would bounce back into the room and end up somewhere on the wooden floor, God knows where, only to be found by the heel of my bare foot (or…help…my wife’s bare foot) sometime later - other than that, no damage to home, ears or wallet. I was a convert, or rather, I came back to the fold. Like most of us I started on airguns and graduated to the real thing in an age when airguns were the gateway drug to centerfire. Now, airguns (what I like to call APW’s) are a thing in their own right and though my little Daisy still sees frequent use, I have discovered an amazing galaxy of products and aftermarket accessories that todays youth and air heads have long known about. I say long, but maybe just over the last ten years since this industry has really grown exponentially. And there’s a whole demographic of teens (and adults too, plus military trainees) who are having a blast with airsoft: okay, some of you sniff with disdain, but if shooting is more about fun than the dedicated pursuit of the perfect home defense weapon or prepping your armory for doomsday, then we can have both our cake and eat it too. Be serious about your guns by all means, but don’t pass up the chance to enjoy the actual act of shooting: for some of us with limited funds, that comes in the form of APW’s by the grace of the gun gods. So take a look at the likes of Pyramid Air or Airguns of Arizona if you want to discover this brilliant, excellent world full of so much fun you may just relegate your cartridge-firing safe queens to moth balls, or Thor forbid, sell them to buy an all American full-auto/suppressed/SBR air-powered weapon which can be shipped straight to your door (sans ATF stamps, months of waiting, joining the FBI list of POI’s etc) and can be fired in the comfort of your basement while you’re supping your favorite beverage and watching Hulu. AH