Guns of the Carnival Midway

When I was a kid my family would take periodic trips down to Sandusky, Ohio, home of the Cedar Point amusement park. Cedar Point is known for their roller coaster- something that has never held any attraction for me- but they also had things like shooting galleries, which I wasted a lot of time and money on. There were two types of shooting galleries in those days, my favorite being the one in which even a kid could fire a real gun at moving target.

The only gun I ever saw used at one of these stalls was a Browning .22 Automatic, chambered in .22 Short. They didn't make much noise, but they did have a very satisfying CRACK when fired, along with a wisp of real smoke. These were the genuine made in Belgium Brownings, too, from before Browning moved a lot of their production to Japan. When I was a kid I thought a Browning .22 Auto would be just about the best rifle ever, so I wonder why I never bought one. One reason, I suppose, is they're not exactly cheap.  The Grade I rifles list for $670-700 and can be had for around $600.  Grade VI guns list at $1500.  (Browning used to offer six different grades, but now only the Grade I and Grade VI are offered.)

The other gun on the midway wasn't a firearm, but for a lot of kids it was something even cooler- a machine gun! So what if it fired BBs? You'd get 100 shots for your dime (or, as time went time, your quarter or dollar.)

The guns at these galleries were Feltman BB guns, a design that went back to the 1930s, as did many of the guns. They've actually been manufactured more of less continually since then. Today, the same basic gun can be purchased as part of a package from Shooting Star, the current owners of the tooling. Some of you may be familiar with the MacGlashan BB gun, which was used as a trainer by the Army Air Force and the US Navy in WWII. That gun actually got its start as a carnival shooting gallery gun, too. I've often wondered if Feltmans were ever used for military training.