Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a catapult or slingshot.

1875		Dundee Courier 27 Sept. 3/3: If a boy with a bean-shooter has a mind to buckle right down to business, he can make the whiole neighbourhood respect his opinions and seek his friendship.
1882		Dly Cairo Bulletin (IL) 1 Dec. 2/2: Every member of the Society will aim his bean-shooter at the bald head or an ear of one of the orchestra.
1888		Fisherman & Farmer (Edenton, NC) 27 Jan. 2/4: When he hits anyone [...] he thrusts his hand, with the bean-shooter, into his pocket and looks in some other direction.
1890		Congressional Record 5 Sept. 9744/2: [He was] shot in the forehead with a leaden bullet from a weapon known as a ‘bean-shooter’.
1900		Guthrie Dly Leader (OK) 18 June 4/4: The police are after the festive small boy with his bean shooter [...] He does nothing but kill little birds and injure property.
1911		G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 148: He’s got no fear and would tackle an army with a bean-shooter if somebody told him it was his duty.
1916		[film title] Beaned by a Beanshooter.
1921		Colville Examiner (WA) 6 Aug. 3/3: When I was a boy [...] I could shoot straight as an army rifle, with a beanshooter.
1953–54		Mad mag. Dec.–Jan. 17: What is it you’ve got idden under your blanket? [...] a machine gun? a bean shooter?
1956		A. Yarmolinsky Road to Revolution [etext] As the year 1876 wore on [...] [i]t was plain that [...] socialist propaganda was making no more impression on the masses than a beanshooter would on a stone wall.
1967		(con. 1924) F. Beck I Fought The Apemen of Mount St Helens [etext] When just a boy I was in the pasture playing with my beanshooter.
2002		in Times News (NC) 4 Feb. 🌐 Does everybody know what a beanshooter is? No, not a peashooter. A beanshooter. It’s also called a slingshot.
2005		Coronado Cty, CA municipal code Ch. 40.68: It is unlawful for any person to [...] use any airgun, slingshot, beanshooter, sling, rubber sling, or other device for the propulsion of shot, stones or other similar substance within this City.

2. a gun.

1938		R. Chandler ‘The King in Yellow’ in Spanish Blood (1946) 89: Don’t get behind him or in front of him. This beanshooter goes on through.
1939		Dundee Eve. Teleg. 28 Aug. 8/4: I’d hate to lose control of my nerves — somebody might get hurt bad if this bean-shooter of mine was to go off.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
2012		A. Bergen ‘Dread Fellow Churls’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] The iris was a faded variant of the bean-shooter between us. Grey.