When I grew up, I could not afford to buy a BB gun, even if my parents would have let me buy it. So, I traded another kid a pile of comic books, a hand made bow and arrow with a quiver made from old rags, for a Crossman BB pistol.
Later,( when I was only 8 years old) several of us made a "Zip Gun"- using a car antenna for a .22 caliber( sorta) smoothbore barrel, and taping it inside the shell of a pot-metal Cap pistol we "rescued" from someone's garbage can. We drilled a hole into the face of the hammer, and put a piece of nail, filed to a sharp edge, and then heated and doused in water in our attempt to harden it( what did we know about metallurgy back then?) as a firing pin. We used rubber bands to drop the hammer , as the spring and trigger in the cap gun didn't work any more. We had found .22 ammo over several years where people had dropped them - along railroad tracks, in empty fields, etc. around the subdivision. We took our collection of ammo out to some vacant cemetery property with a mound of dirt to use as a backstop, and gave it a go. Every cartridge that would discharge Did- altho we had several that were defective.
That "Success" got every kid in the block Interested in guns, and getting a "Real gun" as soon as we could convince the parents to let us have one. I had the money saved for my first gun within a year, and took another 5 years to convince my father to let me buy one. I still have that gun- a Win. Mod. 67, Single Shot .22 rifle, at a cost of $16.00. Every odd job that earned me a quarter got me closer. I would save quarters until I had enough to take to the local bank, on my bicycle, to convert to a dollar bill. When I had 5 singles, I changed them for a 5 dollar bill. I still remember the satisfaction I had when I changed a ten, five, four singles and four quarters for a $20.00 bill- more than enough to buy the gun I wanted, and some ammo for it. I was just short of my 10th birthday.
i think parents can help their kids the best by giving them the responsibility to earn their own money to buy any guns, or other sporting equipment they want- rather than buying it for them. Kids today are not that different than we were- and we were less likely to get "bored" with some activity, and switch to another, when we had spent OUR own money to equip ourselves for that activity. That's why I still have that first gun, my first knife, etc.
