That's a Christmas card picture if I've ever seen one
While normal people were making their final plans for their assault on the next day’s dinner table, my dad gave me what is probably the coolest early Christmas present on the face of the planet. No points for guessing, because the photo makes it pretty darn clear. But wait! There’s more!
For a modest rental fee and the price of ammo, you too can fire fully automatic weapons and a sniper rifle with an effective range of more than 1.5 miles. I had a few moments with five fully automatic machines guns: an MP5, an M4, a Bren MkII, a TP9 and an AK 47. After that, I took a single shot with a 50-caliber AR50 sniper rifle that is longer than I am tall.
It was loud, it was violent, it was destructive and it was glorious. My mother more or less thought it was a waste of money (and you do go through the ammo quicker than you can blink) but both my dad and I had a blast (pun very much intended).
The machines guns were harder to handle accurately than I expected. Unless you’re trying to mow down entire units of advancing soldiers, I’m not convinced that (non-mounted) fully automatic weapons are very useful (granted, soldiers are presumably better trained than I). Here’s my target at 25 yards with the AK 47:
This was firing 4- or 5-shot bursts and just look how inconsistent I was: Half landed in the upper right hand corner and missed the target entirely! The first and second shots would more or less be in the center and after that they started flying off to the upper right. I’m not a terrible shot, either. With a semi-automatic handgun I can get every shot in the 10 ring from that distance on a good day, and within the nine-ring on a terrible day. After the first two or three rounds go off you lose your sight picture and your more or less just pointing the gun the direction you want the bullets to go. And this was at just 25 yards!
Out of the five automatic weapons, I think I preferred the… well, they were all awesome. It’s pretty much a toss up between everything but the AK 47 (IMHO it’s just a lump of metal designed to intimidate). The M4 was the one I was the most accurate with; the Mp5 was awesome because it as suppressed and barely louder than a hand clap; the Bren Mk II was awesome because it was loud, heavy, mechanical and straight out of WWII; and the TP9 was awesome because it was so ridiculously compact.
The TP9 had an awesome holographic sight. WANT.
Look at the size of that cartridge compared to my keys!
Since this was an indoor range, things are going to be a loud. A .22 is loud and the suppressed MP5 was loud. But every now and then, in between the various pops and bangs of the “normal” guys firing all around you, you would feel the ground shake then instantly hear a tremendous BOOOOOOOM that rattled your bones. It was the Big Kahuna: The Armalite AR50 sniper rifle, firing a monstrous .50 caliber round. (For comparison, check out this pic to the left. The Mp5‘s 9mm cartridge is the puny-looking one on the right)
I settled in for my single shot, and prepared for the boom. At 190 decibels, the .50 is not only loud, the sound by itself will actually harm you if you don’t wear ear protection. I’m not talking about hearing loss; I’m talking about bleeding of your ears. Then I lined up on my target 50 yards away and pulled the trigger. The sound was amazingly loud, but it was the concussion wave that quite literally blew me away. If I had hair, I’m pretty sure it would have blown it off. My dad was standing behind me and said it was like someone shoved him very hard.
Watching the video (it’s embedded below) still cracks me up when I see that shot. It’s just… violent. And we’re on the polite end of the gun!
Anyway, I have precisely zero experience firing a scoped rifle, so I wasn’t look for a bulls eye or anything. An expert marksman can put a bullet between the eyes of a terrorist at 1.5+ miles. I would be lucky to hit a man-sized target at 50 yards (1.5 miles is 2,600 yards). Still, I was very proud of my proverbial “lucky” shot:
Be sure you watch the video below (it’s short) and check out the rest of the pictures on Facebook.
