Firearm of The Week, the Official Red Ryder, Carbine Action, Two-Hundred Shot Range Model Air Rifle

I have been told to write a theme-What I want for Christmas. Wow, there it is. The holy grail of Christmas gifts.

The Red Ryder 200-shot range model air rifle. And there he is. Red Ryder himself. In his hand was the knurled stock of as coolly deadly-looking a piece of weaponry as ever I had laid eyes on.

Here it goes; what I want is a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time. “Wow, that’s great.” I think that everybody should have a Red Ryder BB gun. They’re very good for Christmas. I don’t think that a football’s a very good Christmas present.

With these words, this gun became a holiday legend, a festive yarn and A Christmas Story. It was a time when all was right with the world and a gun to match. Kids rode bicycles and skated without body armor from head to toe. Metal, not plastic, pedal cars clogged the sidewalk highways. These pedal car jockeys wore no seatbelts or NASCAR type helmets. Moreover, even though the possibility still existed that you could shoot your eye out you still got a BB gun.

The age of the overly protective soccer mom was at least 40 years away in 1938 when the Red Ryder BB Gun made by Daisy Outdoor Products made its debut. The name came from a comic book strip by the same name, Red Ryder. Out of the box, it came with iron sights and a lever action to match the popular Winchesters seen in the Saturday westerns of the day. It had an engraved stock, saddle ring (of course), and a leather strap on the receiver.

It could launch a steel BB from its cool blue steel smooth bore barrel at up to 300 feet per second and could truly shoot your eye out. This gun is a tack driver at ranges up to eight yards and well out to unheard of reaches of 10 to 11 yards in the right hands. The very weapon that took out Black Bart and his gang in the late 1930s in such trained hands.

I would bet that many a child, boy and girl, has started on a road to appreciating the world of firearms and hunting when they opened their present Christmas morning, officially, and discovered this major award. So, do not forget the one and only Official Red Ryder, Carbine Action, Two-Hundred Shot Range Model Air Rifle when your cornucopia of unbridled avarice begins this year. Its never to late.