In my day, cap guns weren’t blued, they were a kind of cheap chrome or nickel finish. They were toys; all they could do is make bang sounds.
In my day, we had Lugers that were painted black with wood grainn plastic grips and had operating knuckle actions that reliably fired roll caps one shot at a time. Not to mention submachineguns that fired entire rolls with a single squeeze of the trigger.
If anybody - kid included - tries to boost the local 7-11 with a toy gun and gets shot, well, that’s just too bad.
This whole nation has whimped out.
Yes, but they made much louder bang sounds than modern cap guns. I've noticed that the caps available now have so little gunpowder they barely work. At a very young age I dropped a brick on a roll of caps to see what would happen and the bang was so loud it made my ears ring. I tried something similar recently with some of the caps my son has and nothing much happened. The old cap guns also made a pleasant gunpowder smell.