How many of your shooting or outdoorsman acquaintances do you know that did not start out with an airgun as their first ‘real’ gun? I grew up in the 1960s and ’70s, and every kid I knew had a BB gun. The luckier ones had a Benjamin pump. Even at the tender age of 10 or 12 we were pretty good shots because we shot them hundreds of times.
My next-door friend had a Daisy 25 that he could shoot wasps out of the air on a regular basis. I had a basic Daisy that I bought at the hardware store (pre-Wal-Mart days) for $7 - my seventh birthday money. It would hold over 300 BBs that would last less than a week. By the time we were of age to shoot powder guns we were fairly well trained on how to hit what we aimed at. We still needed some work on things like recoil and safety. I can testify because I still carry a BB in my chin where my brother shot me with an ‘unloaded’ Daisy 99. This makes a great visual aid when teaching the youth of today about gun safety.