My newest adventure: 'Hey Mom, I found the gun that fires when you engage the safety!'

Sometimes I totally forget my roots. I mean, I talk about how no one in my family hunted after I was born, but I forget that my dad - who hunted as a kid - was a total insane-O gun nut.

About a year after he died, we had a big memorial gathering at our house to commemorate him, and that was when Mom decided it would be a good idea to go through all his guns.

Which he had kept under the bed. All of them loaded. All of the time. You know, in case the Hun invaded their rural community or something.

Mom wanted me to have one of those guns - an heirloom that her father had bought when he got home from World War I - and we had enough people at the memorial who knew about guns that it seemed like a good time to go through them. You know, people who could tell whether a gun was loaded, and safely unload it.

As we pored over Dad's weapons cache, Mom remembered one thing: "Oh yeah, one of these guns will fire when you engage the safety, but I don't know which one it is, so be careful!" LOL, safety first, eh?

We got through the whole examination and dispersal process without any mishaps. I took my grandpa's gun back home to Minnesota, where I'd take it to the shooting range once in a while - I didn't hunt yet at that point - and everyone was happy.

Fast forward to this year. I have been pining for an air rifle so I'd have a gun I could use for cheap target practice.

I almost got one back in February when Hank and I both won guns at a California Waterfowl dinner. I was going to trade the gun I won for an air rifle, but when I didn't find one that suited my fancy (or the trade-in value of the gun I'd won), I opted for five cases of target ammo instead.

When summer break began, giving me a lot more free time for practice, I got to thinking about it again, and I realized something: Dad had probably had a pellet gun! I asked Mom about it, and she got back to me with the good news: Yes, he had one!

She brought it to me yesterday, and it was game on.

"Does it shoot BBs?" I asked. I know nothing about pellet guns.

"I don't know," she said.

I stared at the gun, looking for answers. It didn't say anything.

"How do you load it?"

That Mom knew. "Here," she said, pulling back an action that didn't look like anything I'd ever seen before. Then she showed me how to work the pneumatic pump. I pumped it and dry-fired it a couple times, and it seemed to work fine. Good enough to get started, I figured.

I started asking my gun nut friends: "Do all pellet guns take BBs?" I got varying answers. Phillip reminded me that the caliber should be stamped on the barrel, but all I saw there was ROSMAN "140." So, I just went and picked up a bunch of Daisy BBs at my local Wal-Mart, and took the gun out for a spin.

I engaged the safety, loaded a pellet, worked the pump a few times, aimed at an empty plastic Diet Coke bottle and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Hmmm.

Safety was on "F," not "S." Maybe I needed to re-set? I moved it back to "S," and Pop! it fired into the canopy of the tree over my head.

Oopsie!

What an excellent reminder, though, about always keeping your muzzle pointed in a safe direction.

I called my mom. "Hey Mom, I found the gun that fires when you engage the safety!"

Or more precisely, it fires when you switch it from "F" to "S" if you have pulled the trigger already. If you haven't pulled the trigger, it's fine. Except for the fact that you fire when it's on "safe" and it's safe when it's on "fire." (It does not, by the way, surprise me one bit that my dad would tolerate this - all the more reason to keep your goddamn hands of his goddamn guns.)

I was glad we were solid on that knowledge, but the rest was still a mystery to me. I could get the gun to shoot BBs, but only if I kept the muzzle tilted up; otherwise, they just rolled out. Obviously, it was not a BB gun.

I did a search online and realized that the funky little action was obscuring the whole name stamped on the barrel: What I had was a Crosman "140," a pneumatic pump, .22 caliber, single shot rifle, made somewhere between 1954 and 1957.

Peering into the opened action, I could not envision stuffing a .22 round in there, so I took it to my local gun store, Wild Sports - where I got both my first shotgun and my first new rifle - and asked the gun guys to help me figure it out.

The answer: .22 pellets, which I must say are the most unlikely looking projectiles I have ever seen. Who knew mushrooms could fly?

I also found a manual for the Crosman 140 online, which makes me really happy, because I'm one of those people who not only knows how to RTFM, but insists on it.

Now armed with information and flying mushrooms, I went out into the field again, put the safety on "F," pumped the gun the recommended number of times (six to eight - thank you, manual), moved the safety to "S" and fired.

Dead Diet Coke bottle!

Well, sorta. This ammo put a big dent in the bottle, but it was really made for paper, so I fashioned a target, pinned it up, and went at it.


Ha! Not flying very gracefully, these pellets. But who cares? This was my dad's gun. The eighth anniversary of his death is coming up in nine days, and I feel a little better knowing now that I've been able to incorporate another piece of his life into mine.

But I think I'm gonna take it to a gunsmith to have that safety worked on.

© Holly A. Heyser 2011