The Big Sandy Shoot - Festival for Machine Guns, Heavy Artillery and Gun Enthusiasts

steve-mcclair (55)in #guns • 8 years ago (edited)

What is up Steemit Community!

I am here to tell you about one of the best kept secrets in the gun world!

The Big Sand Shoot is the largest machine gun festival in the United States. It is devoted to shooting fully automatic machine guns; shooting heavy artillery; and blowing things up. What could be better than that?

***Note: all photos and videos are mine and were not taken from other people around the internet.

In the fall of 2014, I went to witness this for myself.

When I arrived I was astonished to see a line of machine guns that was probably as long as a football field. These guns are lined up on top of a hill and are shot across the valley. People would be shooting their guns at targets. If they hit the targets they would explode.

You are free to walk around and talk to the participants about their guns. They have booths where you can rent a gun and shoot it. I remember people renting .50 caliber machine guns and Tommy guns (think 1920's mobsters).

Every year a special prop is built and is blown up. When shooting at the prop it has to be hit in the right place to explode. It took about 10 minutes of firing to blow up the UFO.

The vast array of diversity among the attendants was impressive. You had young people, old people, historians, active military, cowboys, poor people and the filthy rich. The photo below shows a Gatling Gun (sorry I don't know the model) mounted on top of a vehicle. This gun was not fired when I was there, but it is rumored that a billionaire (I was not told who) owns it and will shoot over $250,000 worth of ammunition in one sitting. This gun can shoot 3,000 rounds of ammunition in a minute or 50 rounds per second.

One of the main attractions is the M18 Hellcat Tank destroyer. It really is an active piece of history. Here I am holding one of its live artillery shells. I am 6 feet or 1.83 meters tall.

Fast forward the video to 2:25.

To finish off the day there is night shoot. It is absolutely amazing to watch it. You are watching thousands of rounds of ammunition fly through the air. The only thing I can compare it to is a Star Wars battle.

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Notes about the Big Sandy Shoot:

These guns are automatic and require permits from the US government to own.
It takes a lot to get a permit and even then you may still not have enough money money to buy an automatic gun.
These guns cost in the tens of thousands of dollars each.
It is more expensive to shoot these guns than to own them. This is because the ammunition is expensive and a lot of it is consumed.
These guns are not sold in gun stores.
You cannot purchase one of these guns online without the proper government licensing.
You cannot buy one of these guns at a gun show either.
The gun massacres we are unfortunately used to seeing on T.V. use different guns. They are much slower than these.
Not even with the "gun show loophole" can someone purchase one of these guns (I don't think the gun show loophole exists anymore).
The Big Sandy Shoot is held twice a year. Once in the spring and the other in the fall.
It is in northwestern Arizona, and is close to a town called Wikiup.
It is open to the public and anyone can attend.
Camping is available for those who wish to do so.
I do not have evidence for this, but I assume there has never been an argument let alone a fight at this event:)

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#artillery #explosives

8 years ago in #guns by steve-mcclair (55)

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birdseyeview (42) 8 years ago (edited)

Thank you for adding the additional information regarding how hard these weapons are to obtain.

To add to what you've said, it takes more than just a permit to get many of these weapons.

Any automatic weapons created after 1986 requires you to become an FFL ( a licensed gun dealer) or firearm manufacturer. Both of these are significant business endeavors. While an FFL can be slightly less involved, you can only own a "sample" of a post '86 automatic firearm that can be used for police department testing.

Source

picture of vehicle with remote controlled M134 Minigun

The weapon in this picture appears to be a M134 Minigun mounted on a remote controlled turret.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minigun

The M134 is a significant amount of firepower.

There are M134's are (very) rarely in circulation but can be bought by regular citizens. With that said, they are incredibly expensive. Not "get an extra day job" expensive but "Mad scientist with an evil lair" expensive .

This one is currently on sale for $285,000. If the product page is to be believed, there are about 12 of these currently in circulation in the US.

The gun has an adjustable firing rate. Assuming it's set at 4000 RPM firing it for 3 seconds costs ~$93.6 dollars (that's assuming it can use regular .308 instead of the 7.62mm)

Here is a video for extra funsies