Doesn’t it?
Just when you thought you’d seen it all, someone opened up with a set of twin-mounted .30-caliber machine guns, or the more lethal array of quad-mounted .50-cals in a swivel turret.
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This looks like funOctober 16th, 2003 |
 17 comments to This looks like fun |
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I would love to have an MG42. Just the thought of sending 1200 8mm Mauser rounds downrange per minute makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Especially since the barrel of my Mauser 98k is shot out and produces 6″+ wide groups at about 30 feet. But that’s what I get for buying over the internet.
Supposedly German snipers in WWII were terrified of the “Ma Deuce”, or 50 cal. mounted machine gun. I’ve seen interviews with soldiers who said that as soon as a sniper started shooting, they’d call in a Ma Deuce and whater tree or structure the sniper was hiding in would literally just disintigrate under the barrage. Complete destruction.
Here in Wisconsin where R.C. and I live, there are several places where one can shoot machine guns, but none will handle the fire power of Knob Creek.
We have an indoor range here in the Milwaukee area which welcomes your pistol caliber Class III arms, and one near Racine which has some for range rental. The upper limit at the occasional Mt. Horeb outdoor shoot is rifle caliber LMGs, and their use is limited in order to preserve the hill used as a backstop.
“…before watching 10-year-old Emily fire the Heckler & Koch MP5, the preferred weapon of counterterrorist units the world over.”
I have to say reading this frightened the living daylights out of me. I’d barely trust myself with that sort of firepower let alone a 10-year old.
But maybe it’s me that’s odd. Maybe that’s one of the problems with living in gun-free Britain (remember Britain has been gun-free culturally far longer than it has been gun-free legally) – you don’t know how to deal with danger or power. My guess is that Emily and a whole bunch of other 10-year olds get on just fine because they have always known how to deal with firearms and how to show them the respect they deserve.
At least I hope so…
Patrick,
Kids, with suitable adult supervision, are as least as responsible as adults around guns.
Oftentimes more. They concentrate, listen to instructions, and don’t even try to f*ck around and get smart.
Also the adults don’t assume anything when kids have firepower and watch them. That helps too.
(It also helps the the type of adults that allow kids to hold firearms at all tend to be the “I don’t take any lip from snotty brats” kind. Kids respect that.)
Fred
Alfred: I’ve had a go with an MG42 – it sounds like a lawnmower starting up! I’d hate to be on the recieving end of it!
Also had a go with an MP43/I, the earlier version of the StG44. That was a little beauty as well!
phil, you lucky bastard. The Sturmgeweher 44 is another I’d love to shoot, it being the first “assault rifle” (using “assault rifle” in military, and not Brady/VPC, terms).
I have friends tell me the MP-40 is a dream to shoot, and that is what I would love to give a go. The .50 cal. is also the scariest thing around, if they had a quad-fifty there it would have been worth the price of admission just to see them cut loose with it.
There’s a place in Marietta Georgia, on Sand Hill Road. Called The Bullet Stop.
They rented machine guns for use on their inside shooting range.
I spent TOO much money there one afternoon.
It was delightful.
Alas, I understand that the Bullet Stop closed a while ago.
The National Rifle Association’s TV show (“American Shooter”?) had an episode on the founders of one of the reloading supply companies, who lives in Nevada. He got into reloading, and eventually built a sizable company, in order to feed his full auto habit. He had it all, baby, up to and including a chain gun and a quad-50. Man, did it look like fun. The casings just river out of the quad-.50 when it opens up.
Patrick, I don’t understand your suggestion that Britain has been “gun-free culturally far longer than it has…legally”. The process of rendering the Brits ignorant about firearms and often widely afraid of them too only started 83 years ago with the first Firearms Act, until which time we were pretty heavily armed according to all the sources I’ve seen – probably as much as comparable countries, in fact more so than many that were somewhat less free politically, though maybe not as much as the USA. WW2 rendered us thoroughly familiar with guns again, and though the rot set in soon after, it was still possible to carry guns around up to the 1960s in a way that might provoke disquiet (and a hysterical police reaction) today.
BTW my 10-year-old son uses my weapons happily, and also a club-owned (long barrel) .38 SP revolver.
RCD – would that be Dillon? I know he’s a full-auto fan.
It must be Dillon, but I just can’t recall for sure.
Yep, the quad 50 rig, which I saw mounted in the back of a Jimmy pickup, is indeed Dillon’s. Wouldn’t it be fun to drop the tarp if someone won’t stop tailgating?
As for youngsters and full-auto, the winner of the bowling pin competition (knock’em off the table with a sub-gun burst) at one recent shoot (Knob Creek’s spring event IIRC) was a teenaged girl.
Here is the link for the Knob Creek range which was the subject of the original linked article.
The Bullet Stop mentioned above allowed people to bring objects to destroy on the range. On Secretary’s Day their MP5K was booked solid because of the useof one in Lethel Weapon for shooting computer terminals
Tony H
What I meant by “culturally” was that I have never seen a privately-owned firearm in the UK. Outside libertarian acquaintances I cannot remember even a discussion about firearms of the “Oh last weekend I went shooting” variety.
Patrick,
I am an Aussie, but very aware of British shooting heritage and present enthusiasm.
Today’s pop values remind me of the famous resolution of some gentlemen of your universities: ‘We resolve we will not fight either for King or Country’, which encouraged Hitler to believe British resolution was not up to stopping Germany. Just because the fashionable climate is against it does not mean shooting is gone in the UK.
Popped into Holland and Holland a while back – but didn’t feel able to spring GBP99K for a royal-grade double rifle.
Doesn’t matter – Britain has the most fantastic airgun industry and your .22 carbine matches are a dynamic response to the fascism of the handgun ‘final solution’ of Blair and chums.
Get some!
About those 10 year old girls: they do have an expensive habit of growing up addicted. The last time I was out shooting with a machinegun collecting friend, his 22 year old daughter, who had started shooting them when she was about 9, finished off a drum magazine in a WWII Thompson, looked at him and said “Daddy, when you die, this gun is MINE.” And boy, did Daddy smile.
The coolest gun thing I have seen is a nite shoot at a major private MG get-together at which I was a guest a couple summers ago: 220 shooters with guns ranging from Stens thru MG42s, watercooled Russian 1910 Maxims and Ma Deuces, to a chain gun, all loaded with nothing but tracer, all cutting loose at once along a firing line 400 yards long. Targets: Cyalume light sticks and dynamite taped to steel rebar, and radio-controlled model airplanes with more Cyalume (no dynamite: they wanted to tape them back together and send them back up.)
It does take a big back yard tho.
Usually when a MG fires you get a stream of tracers, but with a chain gun a half second burst sends a coherent 50 round swarm downrange.
We estimated that over 2 1/2 days, 220 shooters went thru 1.9 million rounds of ammunition. It was heaven.
Well Wudndux, you have the space for it… Sounds terrific fun. Reminds me of when a friend was holidaying in the States, and finding himself on a shooting range in one of the desert states, and accustomed to the very tight range discipline in densely populated England, asked a member what the rules were. “Well son,” came the reply, “just shoot in a northerly direction…”
Patrick Crozier, your information saddens me: never to have seen a firearm in private hands? Never to have participated in gun talk with ordinary people? Sigh… I dare say you live in London, but even that’s no excuse: there are some excellent clubs, e.g. North London Rifle Club. Go West, I say, where there are more guns in private hands than anywhere else in England.
Speaking of 1.9 million rounds of ammo, take a look at National Ammo Day, which is a totally non-sponsored event taking place (this year) from 15-23 November.
Last year, reported purchases of ammo on ONE DAY (19th November) was just over a million rounds. Sales were even reported in Australia, South Africa and Canada, in solidarity.
This year we expanded it to cover two weekends (there being gun shows on both weekends all over the country, and many people prefer to buy their ammo in bulk at those venues).
And yes, I started the whole thing, but I don’t get a penny out of it. I wish I did — I’d have more to spend on ammo.