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...