The Red Ryder is a handy all-purpose tool for a farm kid until he gets a more powerful rifle. It is greating for herding the cows

, instilling RESPECT in a spurring rooster or a hen that doesn't like having its eggs taken :-laf , and great general purpose medicine to clear out snakes, barn sparrows, rats, mice, etc. I killed enough varmints with mine to easily fill the bed of a truck, definitely not just a toy.
I got one of my first lessons in physics at the hands of the old Red Ryder, namely "the angle of incidence is equal to the angle of reflection". Following all the safety rules my Dad had drilled into me, I shot at the broad side of a tree the first day I had the rifle. The BB came straight back at me in a liquid streak that I still remember

and hit me dead center in the forehead, right between the eyes. YEOWWWW :{
That is why so many eye injuries occur with BB guns, the projectile has such low velocity that it cannot deform a hard surface enough to penetrate, and if fired toward a perpindicular surface (wall, target board, etc) at eye level the BB will quite naturally bounce directly back toward the barrel, which JUST HAPPENS to have a face with a couple of eyeballs gazing raptly in the same direction.
Parents can reduce the chance of eye injury to near zero by getting their kids a pair of shooting safety glasses and making them wear them, and by teaching them to NEVER shoot at perpindicular surfaces like walls, signs etc. If you set them up a target to shoot at, just angle the backstop to make the BBs bounce downward and you are golden.
In addition to the usual safety rules, the BB gun shooter should be thoroughly drenched in the 11th Commandment: "THOU SHALL NOT SHOOT AT A HARD PERPINDICULAR SURFACE LEST THY EYE BE OFFENDED. " It is a rule that most BB gun shooters learned the hard way in the old days, I had a nice welt on my forehead for a week or two to remind me :-laf