don't know about the laws, but... start at the top of the Shenandoah Valley outside of Winchester, then down the Blue Ridge and then across the Great Smokey Mountains and it's a trip you'll never forget
Posted on 05/03/2013 6:27:41 PM PDT by rlmorel
I am getting to go on a weeklong road trip down the east coast where I plan to cut across the Blue Ridge parkway and drive west.
I don't have a destination or a plan, I want to spend some time in a part of the country I really haven't seen. I thought I might go through some rural areas where I could just pull off a road somewhere and plink some cans with a wristrocket if it was a nice day and I felt like getting out of the car.
Then it occurred to me that I don't know anything about any laws regarding slingshots. Looking on the Internet posed the usual problem looking for data, separating the wheat from the chaff.
Does any Freeper have any knowledge of any such laws in their area?
When I was a kid in Japan, I accidentally lit a grass field on fire across the street from our house that was a playground.
I had gone off base and bought some smoke bombs. You know, the ones that are about the diameter of a quarter, colored red, green, blue and yellow with that fuze that made it look like one of those old-fashioned bombs?
Well, I found I could light them and had enough time to get them in the slingshot and fire a smoky contrail through the sky.
Well, I did a few, and then with horror, I realized that the area where one landed was some really dry grass, and it went right up because the smoke bomb still had sparks coming out of it when it landed.
Fire trucks came, and fortunately, the only damage was a large area of scorched grass.
Heh, my best friend at the time (Peter Aubrey, whose father was the Captain of the USS Providence at the time) told me that if he had been caught doing something like that, his dad would have hit him with his ‘Shillelagh’!
I had no idea what that was, so he took me into his dad’s closet, and pulled out what looked a tree limb with a huge twisted, varnished knotted tangle of wood at the top.
Is it an “assault wrist-rocket”?
Is it fully automatic?
Silencer?
That’s great!
don't know about the laws, but... start at the top of the Shenandoah Valley outside of Winchester, then down the Blue Ridge and then across the Great Smokey Mountains and it's a trip you'll never forget
What a neat story! Thank you for sharing.
Well, at least my pea shooter can still be carried legally.
....and whose land would you be doing this on?
Ditto that. 'Way back when (early 1990s?), I visited a friend in TX. His roomie and I got to messing around with wrist rockets and cheap small marbles and when soda pop cans in the bushes became too easy a target, we started aiming at rats and squirrels that would run on the telephone lines. We got our share and I bet the neighbor never did figure out why all those marbles were in his pool :-)
Uppers, etc don’t count as firearms. The lower is the firearm, and the part subject to the politician’s regulations.
That takes some time to learn. And practice in the back yard. The cops get nervous if you practice in the front yard.
Bottom line is follow through... just like golf. Complete the swing.
/johnny
I got really good with the wrist rocket, and could pick what size load I wanted to use.
/johnny
I was going to post the same video. The guy is amazing.
Well, since I’ve been buildign ARs for a number of years, I am well aware that ‘the firearm’ is serial numbered and the parts that are not serial numbered are not considered ‘the firearm’. If you build a sound suppressor, you must get fedzilla permission BEFORE building the object AND put a serial number on the item. In the places where a slingshot is banned, is it considered a firearm?
Ah heck. Who knows. I guess the only analogy I have is being on remote logging roads up in northern Maine.
I am not the kind to use someone’s land unkindly or even at all if I am aware.
It is a good point to keep in mind. After reading the responses, I am probably not even going to take it with me anyway. I will have plenty to keep my mind occupied...:)
Heh, you should have seen me huddling in my room, peering out at the window at the park with the fire engines there, my eyes only peeping above the window sill.
I was terrified there was going to be a knock at our front door with the Shore Patrol on the other side!
I never thought about our slingshots to bring in a *GO* bag.
Awesome vid....awesome guy! THX for posting the link.
Are you carrying more than 10 pebbles?
I got up at 4 AM but the weather was pouring rain and fog, and I endured an hour of white knuckle driving until I recognized there was no way I was going to make it. I pulled out my iPad and began looking for a place to stay.
There was only one place I could find (it was a popular wedding time of the year) and it turned out to be completely fortuitous. It was a horse farm, and I got a chance to really ride a horse for the first time in my life. I had been riding plenty of times, but you know how that was...you look at the butt of the horse in front of you, and that is pretty much it.
There were not many people there to ride, so one day I went out and me and the guy who ran the place split off from his wife, who had three 12 year old girls riding for a birthday party. Off we went, just me and him.
It was beautiful. The grass was lush green and spotted with tiny little bright yellow specks that were buttercups, the terrain in the Shenandoah Mountains was just...typical. Large boulders, little creeks here and there, lots of broadleaf trees. Just beautiful. Here is what it looked like:
I was able to take the horse wherever I wanted, off the trail, whatever suited me. He was galloping his horse to and fro, the front of the brim of his broad hat flattened up like a mule skinner! When we came out higher up into a large meadow, he said "You want to gallop that horse?" and with a huge grin I said "You bet!"
He said "Let's go, then!" and kick his horse and we began to run. He had been bragging about how his stallion was the fastest horse in those parts, and that horse just took off. As my horse began going faster, I just began to laugh. It was amazing, and I was having the damnedest time just staying in the saddle, having never done that before. I was slamming up and down to the point where it began to hurt, but it was unbelievably exhilarating.
I have driven fast cars and boats, but I have to tell you: riding a living thing and hurtling over the earth like that was like nothing else I had ever done.
I began to try to figure out how to keep from crashing up and down, and oddly, I actually felt the horse accelerate...she apparently had got the idea she could keep up with the other horse, and began to really speed up. It was astonishing to me. I could feel her come alive, as if she actually did gather herself up, coil and expand...and suddenly the ride smoothed out just a little the faster we went.
The closest thing I can liken it to is sailing in a small fast racing type of boat, when you trim it just right, it heels as you hang over the side, and as you pull in the sheet...you can actually FEEL the power of the wind get transferred right into the boat, and it has a feel of a living thing as it accelerates.
That was what it was like for me to do that for the first time, galloping that horse.
We ran across that meadow, the pale grass up there growing maybe a foot or two high. As we ran, I saw something else I had never seen before. A turkey appeared ahead, and began to make a beeline for the treeline. As the turkey picked up speed, it amazed me how fast it was, it was leaning further forward the faster it ran until suddenly...it took off! Now, I KNEW turkeys could fly, but all I had ever seen of them was a group standing together picking at the ground.
As this turkey ran, about fifty yards from the trees it suddenly began to fly, and I was amazed to see how broad its wings were, front to back.
What a day.
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