My husband is friends with an older gentleman, Bill, from our old church in North Carolina. When we first met Bill, he brought Sam a homemade slingshot he made at home. He explained that he played with them when he was younger, and wanted to teach Sam how to do it. 

Now, this was not a Y-shaped slingshot that you tend to see in cartoons and toy stores. This slingshot was the real deal. It was essentially one long cord with a cradle in the middle of the length for a stone. When it was loaded and you were holding both ends, it was easily an arms length long. He taught Sam how to hold it and demonstrated how it worked– slinging the rock like a lasso above his head before whipping it away. With a slingshot like this, a rock could easily launch the length of a football field. This thing was no toy. You could easily understand how a young King David could use it as a weapon with the velocity and distance Sam and Bill could shoot these rocks.