in the new issue of GOOD Magazine, Gideon Lewis-Kraus comes to terms with machine gun love at the Mustang Ranch's bi-annual Machine Gun Shot in western Nevada. It sounds like, well, a blast! From Gideon's travelougue:
Aside from war, however, machine guns do not seem to lend themselves to utilitarian purposes. A detached investigation of this prima facie absurdity is at least part of the reason I have been dispatched here, to shoot guns in the desert. I am now no longer detached; this no longer feels so absurd. The next range officer on the line hands me a full-auto Glock 18 and I fire before his fingers are off the gun. These firearms enthusiasts find it amusing that this model is de rigueur for the fashionable rapper; it is the most obtuse and imprecise weapon on the submachine-gun range. (Although for me, given that I could barely hit the desert with the Uzi, this seems an invidious distinction.) I crouch forward and am heavy on the trigger. There is a Winnie the Pooh doll crucified on sawhorse stocks; he is untidily aerated. Crane, a gentle man with a dog called Pigglepug, generously defends himself against a poster of an anonymous jihadi with a Palestinian kaffiyeh. Nearby a 12-year-old wields an M1 Thompson at a Mr. Happy doll. "This is better than Disneyland," he says.
"Obviously," Crane says.
