Would shooting bb's in an RWS 52 do damage? Pros and cons?

Air rifle barrels have very shallow rifling grooves designs for soft lead. A hard, copper coated steel BB would damage the rifling I think.

jdollar--Thanks for the response. Makes sense--I'll avoid bb's. Afterall pellets are cheap enough, why would I want to use bb's? Just wondering.
I do have a cheap Daisy bb gun that you can also shoot pellets in it.

I have one of those Crosman pump up 1377 air pistols in which I only use the lead BB's. I too was wary of the potential for bore wear if using the hard copper plated steel BB's, which BTW gave less penetration than the lead BB's anyway.

I found loading pellets into the single shot gun was a pain as often when dropping them into the breech ready to be inserted in the barrel as the cover/bolt was closed, the pellet would land wrong way round. BB's simply drop in and feed as there is no wrong way with them, and the 8gr lead BB is extremely accurate and hard hitting out of the Crosman.

Buy yourself a Daisy Red Ryder---It will shoot your eyes out!

Hip

Yup. Hard BBs are for smoothbored BB guns only.

And being steel, they can bounce off a hard surface right back at your face. Don't ask me how I know.