For me, “Machine Gun Shoot” and “Family Friendly” somehow don’t go together

by David Safier

We're going all the way to Kentucky for this story, where the bi-annual, 3 day Machine Gun Shoot just ended. From the website:

The Machine Gun Shoot itself consist of four rounds of firing at a wide variety of appliances, vehicles, pyramids of tires, and barrels of fuel with pyrotechnic charges attached. The pyrotechnic charges are then painted orange for the shooter to see. The charges are set off by the impact of the bullets. Creating large and small mushroom clouds and fire balls from hell!! (Click here to see a video of one of our machine gun shoots) Their objective is to destroy everything down range. A wide variety of rare and exotic weaponry will be on display for all to see. Such as Water Cooled Brownings, Mini-guns, AK-47′s, MG-42′s, Tommy Guns, M-16′s, Vickers Belt Fed, Uzi’s, MP5′s & many others too numerous to mention.

Not my kind of event, I must say. I rarely attend gatherings where this kind of a message comes over the loudspeaker.

As we passed the main firing line, a man's voice came over a loudspeaker praying to God on all of our behalf for protection from shrapnel. (In 2008, two spectators were injured at the shoot by flying metal. In 2006, a Virginia man suffered a shrapnel injury when his anti-aircraft machine gun misfired.)

And this is probably not how I would typify the event:

WE ARE FAMILY FRIENDLY
Nothing brings families together like blowing stuff apart… Safely.

The photo is from the event's website.

Also part of the not-family-friendly feeling for me is the Nazi-logo T-shirts sold by vendors, side-by-side with the gun dealers.

If you want to see what a "family-friendly machine gun shoot" looks like, you can watch the video below. If you have an aversion to seeing men standing behind tripod-mounted machine guns blasting at the hulk of a old truck, I suggest you skip it.