Fair ground or carnival style shooting rink

i miss shooting the piano player to get him playing, and those moving ducks and rats, i think it would be a hit

Back in the "good ol days" if you shot yourself in the eye the doctor gave you an eye patch and the kids made fun of you, today the parents sue you and the kids for bullying their kid on line.

I've often wanted to rent a booth at our county fair to exhibit different kinds of nice PCP air rifles as an introduction of them to the public. Yes and some kind of fun little reactive targets to shoot at.

Problem would be the legal ramifications if there was an accident somehow, and creating a strong backstop for the roof and sides.

Also worried about people messing up the guns. 

I liked the full auto BB guns that looked like Thompsons with an air hose attached. The target was a small card with a red star in the center. If you could completely shoot every bit of red before you ran out of BBs you'd win a prize.

I've often wanted to rent a booth at our county fair to exhibit different kinds of nice PCP air rifles as an introduction of them to the public. Yes and some kind of fun little reactive targets to shoot at.

Problem would be the legal ramifications if there was an accident somehow, and creating a strong backstop for the roof and sides.

Also worried about people messing up the guns.

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The old shooting galleries used Graphite .22 shorts to eliminate ricochets and shoot throughs. Might be able to do something like plastic pellets for demonstration purposes.

I liked the full auto BB guns that looked like Thompsons with an air hose attached. The target was a small card with a red star in the center. If you could completely shoot every bit of red before you ran out of BBs you'd win a prize.

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Oh man, I used to love those shot out the star BB machine guns. Never did get a full star though - wonder if anyone ever did? But I do recall those BB guns were chained down solid - you had maybe 6 inches of up/down and left/right movement.

I liked the full auto BB guns that looked like Thompsons with an air hose attached. The target was a small card with a red star in the center. If you could completely shoot every bit of red before you ran out of BBs you'd win a prize.

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Oh man, I used to love those shot out the star BB machine guns. Never did get a full star though - wonder if anyone ever did? But I do recall those BB guns were chained down solid - you had maybe 6 inches of up/down and left/right movement.

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I remember those days as well. 

For me it was Marriotts Great America in Santa Clara, Ca. Circa 1975. You paid the price and received one loaded tube of bb’s into your janky rifle of choice. You blasted away at the red star till the magazine went empty, way too soon! Of course when the target was retrieved, there was always one small piece of dangling chad that was red LOL. 

I recall there being a couple targets that were on display as proof possible that some lucky shooter actually won!! The trick was to immediately get on target and circle ️ the star with your spray of bb’s

Janky is what I remember about those to, although we still spent our quarters.

As I recall some of the guns would seem to work a little better than others and to have a chance you had to try them all, get lucky by picking the semi accurate one to start, or observe a bit. Standing back and watching several groups go first was what I did, then make sure I get gun 3 or whatever. Still winning was next to impossible.

I also remember the guns either being mounted down turret style or on a very short leash making it impossible to point it off range.

Weren't some games a "race" against the guys next to you also? Whomever got the targets 1st wins



Putting a nice pcp in the hands of the public on the one hand is a cool idea, but in practice would likely be messed up by someone.

Maybe you could leash the guns down, have the people sign waivers, and get insurance on the guns against damage?

At one carnival the Carnie that was running it would do it regularly to prove it could be done. Like whyzee said immediately circle it and it will clear the star. Never did it myself either. Quarters weren't as easy to come by in the 60s

He had a Crossman pump rifle as one of the prizes. I spent more trying to win it than it would have cost at a store and walked away empty handed but it sure was fun trying.

Have you inquired with the venues if their insurance will allow for live firing at the event. That could be a stopper right there. Do you have your own liability insurance as well? Doesn't matter what the sign says, someone gets hurt from negligence and it's you getting sued. Our newer PCP guns are also pretty dang powerful. Are you planning on detuning them to be more appropriate for a 5-10yard range? 

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea. In our lawyer happy country I see a lot of concerns that would need to be addressed. Maybe it's because I'm a North East city boy that I'm a bit more uptight and things in the midwest are more relaxed, but still.

If you could meet the legal requirements with an appropriate backstop, locked down guns, ect. 

I'll bet you would find it hard to keep a few of the LCS sk 19 guns loaded. A lower power .22 cal. (as mentioned above) with a light alloy pellet in select fire, and a carnival style target system. I'd predict long lines at that booth. 

My dad wrote this in another forum 2-3 years ago...He will be out of contact for a while but I thought you could be interested in his project...Thanks, AZ jr.

AZ wrote:

I looked for one of those OLD Thompson machine guns during the late 70's and finally found one in brand new condition back in the mid 90's, the new guns are not as appealing as these old Thompson replicas...I rebuilt it all to better than new condition (stock and metal finish) and only replaced the barrel and loading magazine tube...The inside mechanism was in perfect brand new condition and those are designed to last forever assuming that you lube them right. 

These guns were originally designed for shooting #2 lead shot (.15 cal) but many guns were made in .17 and .18 calibers for shooting #B & BB size BB's ...The backstops used at the fairgrounds were designed for not reusing the lead BB's but many fairground stands reused them even though they got deformed and jammed the mechanisms often...I re-barreled this gun with a .177 steel smooth bore barrel for shooting regular Daisy & Crosman steel BB's that are found anywhere and improved the system by magnetizing the loading breech mechanism (picks the BB from the magazine and brings it up to the barrel) so if you stop shooting and point the gun downwards there is no BB dropping as it happens with all of the lead original barrels...

I re-sized the Red Star targets proportionally to the new .177 BB size and print them at home in target paper...As it is, the gun is way more accurate than it ever was shooting lead and if you do your job, one hole groups at 8-10 meters are very easy to shoot...I use a 4 x 4 ff. frame with a Kevlar backstop and extra heavy canvas for the sidewalls for those sporadic ricochets, the Kevlar mat was my archery backstop and at the bottom of the frame I have a strainer for separating paper coming from the targets from the BB's attached to a cloth funnel connected to a 5 gallon container for recuperating and reusing the BB's...

The setup works amazingly well and all it takes is 100-150 PSI of air pressure and either an auto oiler or a drop of pneumatic tools oil every now and then...I cut the tubes for loading he magazine to hold exactly 100 BB's as intended in the original game and it only takes 5-10 seconds to load the 100 BB's into the gun's magazine (hole on the butt stock)...I have 100+ loading tubes and those you load by placing them all together inside the BB's container and dropping the BB's from above with your hands (It takes less than 1 minute to load those 100 tubes)...

Shooting the RED STAR is very and I mean VERY addictive and the good thing is that it doesn't cost anything but paper, a little oil and compressed air!

Best regards,

AZ

Thanks for posting that story and the pictures!

Good luck with doing the shooting booth. You're probably doing it the only way possible if you can. Now days you'd need to be sure anyone who gets their hands on one that is ready to fire has passed some sort of firearms safety course. I can just see somebody putting their phone down for a few seconds and looking to see what's in the barrel.

looks gooo

I remember shooting at a shooting gallery at Fairy Land Amusement Park in Kansas City Missouri in the mid 70's and we shot .22 rifles with .22 shorts. NOBODY shot anybody else or went mass shooting crazy. NOWAY you could do that today with all the anti gun/ save you from yourself government propaganda and control.