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Cap Guns

Before it became frowned upon for small children to walk around pretending to shoot each other with realistic guns that created loud explosions, cap guns were as common as, well, bows and arrows with suction cups on the end.

For those unfamiliar with the concept (the girls, mainly – sorry, but it’s true), these were toy guns made to look like classic Western revolvers (and sometimes other models) into which you loaded a strip or ring of caps which, when struck by the gun hammer, made a satisfying snappy bang and emitted a puff of smoke, similar to the bang of a Christmas cracker, but with more menace.

Ring caps were little plastic capsules containing a tiny amount of explosive (so small as to be completely safe) that were pressed into the revolver cylinder and set off one by one when you pressed the trigger. The process of loading them was more like loading a real gun but they only gave you six shots.

More progressive junior gunslingers used strip caps, a thin paper ribbon punctuated every third of an inch or so with a full stop of explosive. When the hammer hit one of these, the strip advanced along one step ready for the next shot. A strip could hold hundreds of caps, which allowed for lots of rapid-fire action, but did mean your gun always looked a bit odd with what appeared to be a paper streamer flying around behind it.

Personally, I preferred the strip caps, but only because you could unravel them, spread them across the floor and run a stone along them to let off a whole volley of bangs in one go.

Whatever your chosen ammunition, it didn’t really matter. Whoever you shot would claim that you missed them anyway.

Tragically, the kids of today have graduated to real guns, and with those you cannot pretend the bullet missed you.

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