Red Ryder BB Gun Made Famous in A Christmas Story Freaks Out BBC Journo Who Sees Them for Sale at Florida Walmart

Photo by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/Getty Images.

A Florida Walmart’s display of BB guns caused anguish for a visiting BBC reporter, who unwisely invited an avalanche of mockery by tweeting about it.

“You’ll put your eye out, kid!” 

That was the zealous warning from every adult — including Santa Claus himself — admonishing young Ralphie Parker against his fervent desire for an “official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle” in the classic 1983 film A Christmas Story.

Ralphie, memorably portrayed by Peter Billingsley, would eventually get his Christmas wish and the Red Ryder BB gun would cement itself in the minds of American children for generations. He did end up cracking his glasses but did not, in fact, put his eye out (I would have marked that “spoiler alert,” but, come on, the movie is over forty years old).

So perhaps the eyesight of young Americans was the true concern of Irish journalist Pádraig Belton when he tweeted that he couldn’t find a plug adapter for his UK laptop at Walmart, but “can buy a rifle and ammunition.” Or maybe he just didn’t read the boxes indicating these were airguns for children 10 years of age and older.

To be fair, the Red Ryder airguns, manufactured by a company with the very nonlethal sounding name “Daisy,” are technically rifles, but they shoot 4.5 mm BBs, not bullets. [Obvious disclaimer here that you can in fact put someone’s eye out with even a BB gun so don’t ever point one at another human being.]

Anyway, Twitter users had a good laugh at Belton’s expense.

Perhaps Florida is just not a good environment for Belton. He tweeted later that he had gone running for an hour on Miami Beach without sunscreen and was now “bright red.”

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