bean-shooter n Also beanie-shooter, beany-~ Cf beaner n 2, bean-flipper n, bean-snapper n, beany n, gravel-shooter n, gum shooter n, nigger-shooter n, rubber shooter n
A slingshot.
1870 New Albany Daily Ledger (IN) 7 Dec [2]/3 (newspaperarchive.com), There is great complaint among property holders of a large number of boys who go about the streets with “bean shooters” and “gravel flippers,” which they use with destructive effect upon the windows of residences and public buildings. 1871 Daily State Gaz. (Trenton NJ) 7 July [3]/2, Some boy, with what is called a “bean shooter,” struck the large plate glass window of Thomas C. Hill’s saloon. 1877 NH Patriot (Concord) 14 Nov 1/3, During the sickness however, of good little boys who never knew the wicked ways of the elastic bean shooter, . . the room should be disinfected by carbolic acid. 1890 Congressional Record 5 Sept 9744/2 AR, Judge Benjamin. . . was . . shot in the forehead with a leaden bullet from a weapon known as a “bean-shooter.” 1919 Forest & Stream 89.174 NYC, I began my hunting in New York City with a bean-shooter, killing dozens of sparrows and learning to hit marks with them—and never a broken window! 1922 Hutchinson News (KS) 15 June 10/3, Just then a gang of little boys swooped in looking for a “beany shooter.” 1933 Clovis NM Eve. News–Jrl. 7 Sept 4/6, The mighty young hunter . . slipped quietly down the alley and around the garage corner, and with his bean shooter or nigger flipper loaded to the gills, he took deadly aim and fired both barrels or forks, if you will. 1948 Sat. Eve. Post 29 May 4/3, We boys in the Midwest 50 years ago called it a beanshooter. 1953 Salina Jrl. (KS) 22 Mar [9]/2 (newspaperarchive.com), Three youths, using a beanie shooter to fire BB pellets, picked the wrong target when they shot at a car driven by a member of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation. 1962 Atwood Vocab. TX 68, The familiar piece of boys’ artillery made of a forked stick and rubber strips. . . Bean shooter and bean flip, which are very rare in Texas, appear fairly often in southern Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma. 1970 Tarpley Blinky 230 neTX, Boy’s weapon made of rubber strips on a forked stick . . [2 infs:] bean-shooter. 2012 in 2015 DARE File—Internet seAZ (as of c1935), The last week the front row came armed with beanie shooters and . . by about the third verse pelted them off the stage. Ibid nVA, Boys learned to build and use the lowly “beanshooter” or “bean-flip”. Our slingshots were cut from the crotch of a dogwood tree. . . I still have mine, which has taken lots of rabbits and small game for the pot.