The Shooting Star Tommy Gun is a
pneumatic machine gun
A machine gun is a fully automatic, rifled autoloading firearm designed for sustained direct fire with rifle cartridges. Other automatic firearms such as automatic shotguns and automatic rifles (including assault rifles and battle rifles) ar ...
manufactured by Shooting Star Inc. It was invented by Charles A. Feltman, the grandson of
Charles Feltman, often credited as the inventor of the
hot dog
A hot dog (uncommonly spelled hotdog) is a food consisting of a grilled or steamed sausage served in the slit of a partially sliced bun. The term hot dog can refer to the sausage itself. The sausage used is a wiener ( Vienna sausage) or a f ...
in
Coney Island, New York
Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to the ...
with young Feltman previously inventing a hot dog roll toaster.
The first version of the game was called "Mow 'Em Down" and featured a pneumatic machine gun resembling a water cooled
heavy machine gun
A heavy machine gun (HMG) is significantly larger than light, medium or general-purpose machine guns. HMGs are typically too heavy to be man-portable (carried by one person) and require mounting onto a weapons platform to be operably stable or ...
and was invented in 1939. Later Feltman modified the design to resemble a
Thompson submachine gun
The Thompson submachine gun (also known as the "Tommy Gun", "Chicago Typewriter", "Chicago Piano", “Trench Sweeper” or "Trench Broom") is a blowback-operated, air-cooled, magazine-fed selective-fire submachine gun, invented by United Sta ...
with a patent granted in 1941
The weapon fires 100 .150
BBs, made of #2 lead shot. Later, a "Combat" variant was introduced, which crudely resembles a
Colt AR-15
The Colt AR-15 is a lightweight, magazine-fed, gas-operated semi-automatic rifle. It is a semi-automatic version of the M16 rifle sold for the civilian and law enforcement markets in the United States. Colt's Manufacturing Company currently ...
.
Feltman industries operated in Coney Island for many years until it then moved to
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...
and became Shooting Star Inc, as the object of the game was to shoot out all traces of a red star on a white paper card.
Gallery
File:Shooting Star Tommy Gun.jpg, The "Tommy Gun" variant.
File:Shooting Star Combat gun.jpg, The "Combat" variant.
References
{{Use dmy dates, date=June 2017
Air guns of the United States
Carnival games