Range in the Home

At a "shooting party" in Boston's Algonquin club last week, Host Melvin Maynard Johnson Jr., president of Johnson Automatics, Inc., introduced his latest "weapon"--an indoor target gun. With it, big (6 ft. 4 in.), handsome Mel Johnson, inventor of the Johnson semi-automatic rifle and machine gun, hopes to bring the rifle range into every home.

The tommy-like target rifle works on the principle of the slingshot. It shoots BB-sized ball-bearing pellets, carefully machined so that they will fly straight. The propellant is a thick rubber band inside the barrel. The gun is cocked by stretching the band taut with a metal piece containing the pellet, which slides inside the barrel. The trigger releases the slide which snaps out the pellet.

The rifle, which has a peep sight and range and windage adjustments, is so accurate that a reasonably good shot can hit a thumbnail-sized target at 30 feet. Yet the pellet travels slowly enough to be dangerous only to eyes.

Johnson, a Marine Corps reserve captain and one of the foremost U.S. small-arms experts, holds that anyone can learn to shoot with his toy as efficiently as with an ordinary rifle. The Marine Corps and the British Government are considering them for possible use in training. One Marine Corps base has already ordered some to sell in its post exchange. In his small two-story, ivy-covered plant at Cranston, R.I., Johnson has already turned out 10,000 rifles for sale in toy and gun stores. Retail price: $15. With the target rifle he hopes that his company, which has been losing money since the end of the war, will hit the black.

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