Airgun or Firearm Written Review

Why on earth would anyone want or need an Airgun?

Now a comment like that will start all kinds of keyboard warriors off on a single minded crusade of one sort or another and after 3 years of doing this I know where the comments delete button is.....”oh the power!!”

So before we start, this is an Airgun channel if it hasn’t already slipped your attention and naturally I am pro Airguns, that does not mean by association I am anti any other types. And of course, we need to remember;

Different countries have different laws around all types of guns, some can have full firearms and some have far greater restrictions and I can already hear the sound of patriotic flag waving and 2A comments and I understand that and as always, please guys, this is not a political platform it’s about fun and community.

Let’s look at a “sort of” top ten reasons why shall we, in no particular order....

Let’s start with ammunition, you see not only is this often a lot easier to obtain for Airguns, with fewer restrictions, it comes in higher quantities for the price, making it very cost effective. Let’s take a Glock pistol as an example here.

And let’s look at a box of 9mm ammo shall we. Then, let’s buy it in a reasonable bulk purchase to try and keep the costs down. So a box of 1000 rounds is going to cost an average of $150, naturally it is more expensive if you buy in smaller amounts.

Alternatively or indeed additionally You could buy a Glock in either bb or pellet form. In which case the ammo for the co2 powered item will cost you around $4.25 for 1500 steel bb’s or around $10 for around 500 lead pellets, plus of course the co2 to power it. These will run you around 36 cents each if you again bulk buy say 50 of them per time. Depending on the gun you are using you will use between 1 and 2 of these per 100 shots.

So let’s do a cost per 100 shots equivalent shall we.

9mm = $15 per 100

BBs = 28 cents per 100 plus co2 @ 36 cents each is a total 64 cents per 100 approx

Pellets = $2 per 100 plus 36 cents for co2

All this is not only a win for the Airgun on cost per shot, but more importantly means more range or trigger time, which can’t be a bad thing for that all important practice.

Ok, whilst we’re talking costs, let’s also point out that a pistol such as the Glock 17 we’ve used in this example is only a fraction of the cost of the real firearm Glock. Taking that even further, there are air pistols out there for less than £50 or $50 that are really pretty good and will also give you that practice time at ultra low budget prices. Now again I hear the keyboard warriors warming up, yes you can spend an awful lot more on Airguns than £50 if you are getting heavily into it and depending upon your preferred discipline, but you can spend thousand and thousands on firearms, so step away from the keyboard guys....

So far so good, but, what about the big point that is already being shouted at the screen. Power!!

Airguns are only toys!!

Well of course power is nothing without control and there are circumstances where you can have too much power. Really, yes you can. You see not everyone can just get into a p150 and drive out into the desert and shoot some big old wild boar at 1000 yards. Because, we don’t have a p150, wild boars or that amount of spare land doing nothing, we have pigeons or rats in a back garden around the size of a postage stamp that we can walk to, or we have farm buildings with smaller vermin that if shot with anything more than a low powered rifle would go through the quarry and damage the surrounding buildings, resulting in 1 very upset farmer at the very least.

So there is definitely a time and place for power, and for shooting paper targets to practice with in your garage or basement. On a wet day you don’t really need a .50 cal high power sniper rifle. Neither do you need huge back stops for lighter powered Airguns to catch the shot. And of course a ricochet from a BB gun is going to do a lot less damage than from a .44 cal or more.

Now you can still do some damage with Airguns undoubtedly and they must be treated with full and utmost respect, but most Airguns are less likely to do terminal damage as opposed to a firearm. So powerwise, there are circumstances where an Airgun has more than enough power and is more suitable than a firearm. Of course there are still circumstances where only a firearm will do, but not always!

Practice... well we’ve pretty much covered this off I suppose, they are cheaper to get the practice time in, they can be used in places your full firearms can’t or at least wouldn’t be as safe to do so. They may even be easier and less restrictive to carry in certain parts of the world. Of course it allows you to practice gun discipline too, with lower risks as we’ve already said. There are several different types of Airguns available that also replicate the blowback action to still give you that feel. This particular aspect of Airgun ownership will pretty much be crossed into by all the other reasons for owning one along the way.

There are hundreds of different styles and types of Airguns out there, which mimic the real firearm, so closely they can be Very difficult to tell them apart at first glance, with all the same field stripping capabilities often. This makes them a lower cost option to build a collection of styles and designs and because of the lower costs involved, this can mean either a cheaper way of building a collection or .....a bigger collection!!

There are even Airgun replicas that you cant get in the real firearms version anymore, at least not legally. Collecting these can be really quite addictive.

They can also be bought by re-enactment groups and are not then subject to the same laws and rulings around firearms, and for filming or show purposes it would be pretty impossible to tell the difference.

The next real plus to me is the ability to give the younger members the skills, disciplines and safer practice times to get them interested in the sport. Remember you don’t just pick up a gun and enter the Olympics and win gold, it starts young, very young in some cases. And you don’t want to go round giving very young shooters high power rifles, there are more than enough country songs around including lyrics about how “billy got his daddy’s gun!” And they never end well! I know I started my girls into the sport with low power Crosman and gamo guns and they never got hurt inspite of the odd ricochet from a tin can here and there, and they are still here today and yes they also love country music too.

Then there is the sound of silence. Having had a house full of daughters, believe me you learn to appreciate silence. And the one thing Airguns are is quiet, well quieter than most firearms, and if they aren’t, then adding a silencer to them is not a difficult or expensive thing to do, resulting in better relationships with the neighbours and others in the vicinity. Oh yes, I said silencer and not moderator or suppressor, I don’t really care what anyone wants to call them, I just know the original patent stated silencer, but I don’t mind what you want to call them. The point is it makes an already quiet gun even quieter very easily and quickly, which by the way this also means the 2nd rabbit, rat or pigeon is still there ready for your second shot quite often. So win win. Now adding silencers or moderators or suppressors to firearms can often be illegal in many places or require a license at least in others, so win win win I suppose for the Airgun again.

Small vermin then, no not the kids! rats, rabbits and the like, in situations like these a high power firearm would be more than overkill (pardon the pun) it would most likely be ridiculous. So again in tighter or smaller spaces, a lower power Airgun will be more than enough to take out small vermin, and upto about 100 yards, there are plenty of higher power versions out there if needed.

There are even Airguns with power adjusters on them to increase or decrease the power output, try finding those on firearms.

Yes as I’ve already said, if your wanting to take wilderbeast out on the Serengeti planes, leave your Airgun at home, but in your back yard, you can take out the pests in silence without the need to explain to the police when they come around after the neighbours have phoned them because they heard a firearm discharged. And you are also able to keep the projectile within your boundaries easier.

And last but not least the ease of ownership. Airguns are, in most countries at least, easier to obtain than real firearms, some places need very little, some need simply proof of age ie over 18, and I realise some will need a full permit to obtain. But generally wherever you are it is easier to get an Airgun than a firearm. Again this is not the platform to start complaining about local laws, that is better off being taken up with your local authorities or respective governments, And as we have already said, the ammunition is also so very much easier to obtain usually too.

So whilst this is not, and was never intended as, a firearms verses Airguns review, hopefully even the most hardened firearms owner/shooters can see a time and place where an Airgun would likely as not be the better option, not always but certainly on occasions. And if you are in a place where firearms are allowed, then maybe there is a good enough reason for that, but please don’t just class Airguns as toys, because believe me some of them out there, most definitely are not.

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this

See you next time, thanks for watching.

See the review here: https://youtu.be/1B1NcAeSI2A