← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · confederate_commando
Thread ID: 13853 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-05-24
2004-05-24 00:24 | User Profile
[url]http://www.in-forum.com/ap/index.cfm?page=view&id=D82OE0OG0[/url]
Minnesotans lined up to take their shot with machine guns By RICHARD CHIN The Associated Press - Sunday, May 23, 2004 ÷ advertisement ÷
They showed up for the semiannual machine-gun shoot to blaze away with an astounding variety of weapons.
Dozens of people - men and women, teenagers and grammar-school kids - lined up to take their turn pulling the trigger on an AK-47, a Tommy gun, an Uzi or a Sten.
The shoot was a sight that would fill your heart with glee or horror, depending on where you stand on the Second Amendment debate.
The Minnesota Machine Gunners Association, a couple dozen guys who get together every spring and fall and invite the public, has held the event on Armed Forces Day for the past five or six years at the West Branch Gun Club near Princeton.
During the daylong event, they sprayed thousands of rounds of ammunition downrange, perforating an assortment of targets: old vehicles, toilets, bowling pins, a dish antenna, a television set, a personal computer, propane tanks, a couch, a plastic snowman and images of Osama bin Laden.
More than a few rounds stitched the pond in front of the target range, sending up impressive spouts of water. At one point, something - possibly a snowmobile's gas tank - caught fire, billowing a lot of dense black smoke around the site, a former rock quarry.
Except for pauses to reload, let the guns cool and set up new targets, the noise was relentless. There was the zipping sound of modern submachine guns; the ripping canvas roar of a legendary World War II German MG-42; and the heart-stopping "BOOM" of a .50-caliber rifle.
The nearly 400 people who showed up were mainly men. But there were also fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, and what looked like couples on dates, taking pictures of each other firing MAC 11s or MP5s or posing in front of the carcass of a shot-up motorcycle.
"There are no skinheads, no weirdos," said Bob Bowman, one of the event's organizers.
Myron Henderson, 79; his son, Blake, 45; and his grandson, Shane, 13, came from Winona to fire "whatever looks neat," including a .30-caliber Browning 1919 used by American GIs in World War II.
Paul Dahlinger, 48, of Rochester steered a couple of friends toward a "classic" for their first machine-gun experience.
"You have to shoot a Thompson submachine gun the first time," he said. "Men, women, they all giggle."
Dave Kranitz, 33, of Ramsey, brought his 10-year-old son, Matthew.
"He can go back to school and tell them he shot a machine gun that cycles at 1,200 rounds per minute," Kranitz said.
"I think it's a good experience for kids. It's fun," said Claire Byerly, 13, who came from Robbinsdale with her father and brother.
Ron Brace, an emergency-room doctor and machine-gun collector from Cambridge, was there. "I'm lousy at golf," he said.
So was Wayne Hanson, an arms dealer from Fridley.
"I probably shouldn't tell you I'm a retired postal worker," Hanson said as he loaded a gun for a new shooter.
Entrance to the event cost $10 a person, plus shooting fees that varied with the gun. The fee averages 35 cents a round, according to Bowman. But at fully automatic, that can chew through the wallet pretty fast. Several people said they planned on shooting away $100 to $200.
"When you get behind a belt-fed machine gun, you pull the hammer on 250 rounds almost as fast you can spit," said Bowman, who said his collection includes 150 machine guns and a Russian tank.
The appeal for some was the chance to fire guns that changed history, iconic arms dating back to World War I, wielded by the famous and the infamous, the weapons of gangsters and terrorists, G-men and great armies.
Others, fascinated by mechanical ingenuity, like to compare the different solutions inventors like Maxim, Browning, Thompson, Kalashnikov and Uzi devised over the past century for the problem of how to kill better and faster.
But many don't worry about history or technology. They just want an adrenaline rush.
"You'll never hold anything as powerful as that in your hands," said shooter Tim Burns.
Maybe that's the allure of anything that's exotic, rare and almost forbidden.
Federal laws allow law-abiding citizens who pass background checks to own machine guns but only a highly limited number of guns registered before 1986. Some states prohibit them altogether. And some, like Minnesota, limit ownership to guns old enough to qualify as curios and relics, which generally means World War II vintage or older.
The effect of those restrictions means the few machine guns that are legal to own sell for as much as a luxury car, effectively keeping them out of the hands of all but a few.
For most people, the May 15 event was their only shot.
That's why Anna Schrage, 23, her sister, Laura, 26, and their dad, Steve, 62, drove up from Eau Claire, Wis.
"When else in my life am I going to be able to say I shot a machine gun?" Anna said.
Information from: St. Paul Pioneer Press, [url]http://www.twincities.com[/url]
:gunsmilie
2004-05-31 23:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Current93]Good thing there were no militant Whiteys around. Imagine aware Whites being allowed to fire full-auto![/QUOTE] That's assuming the militants wouldn't be smart enough to try and blend in and let a positive gun article get written for a change. You seem to be making that assumption also...that they weren't noticed and must not have been there, being publicity hounds and all.