Itchy Trigger

You can buy an HK MP5 for less than $500 on the following site. Put a rubber-band around the trigger and it will fire automatically like a bump stock. For the extra 42.5K you can buy ammo and extra rubber bands. ;-) HK MP5 16 Inch Barrel FDE - In Stock (omahaoutdoors.com)

I don't want an NFA machine gun and can't begin to afford a non-NFA machine gun, let alone afford to shoot it. Actually, can't afford an NFA one either!!!

Slightly anti-gun, but interesting. Machine Gun Tourism is very popular in Hawaii with the Japanese as well. ============================================================================================= In Texas, You Can Rent a Machine Gun for the Price of Dinner (texasmonthly.com) In Texas, You Can Rent a Machine Gun for the Price of Dinner Customers “tell me it’s better than therapy, actually, and cheaper, too,” said a trainer at one rental facility. No Texas city seems to openly embrace its vices as readily as Houston. In a town known for its lack of portion control, you can find a 24-hour restaurant serving forty varieties of pies and more fast food restaurants than any other city in the nation. If adult entertainment is your indulgence of choice, the city’s famous strip clubs—housed in multilevel warehouses that take up entire city blocks, with numerous stages and cafeteria-style buffets—are a world unto themselves. Perhaps, then, it’s not surprising that the city has leaned into another pastime regarded as transgressive in most other cities: the firing of high-powered guns better suited to military operations than to hunting or target shooting. While driving on Loop 610 just outside the Galleria, tens of thousands of Houstonians each day pass by a massive, bright red advertisement for an activity you’re unlikely to encounter in the bustling hearts of most urban environments: fully automatic machine gun rentals for $40 plus cost of ammunition. Top Gun Range, a fifteen-lane indoor shooting facility that sells guns and rents them, is located about two miles west of the signage, in a gray warehouse tucked among apartment buildings, a Nigerian restaurant, and a wholesale liquor business. Managers say the brightly colored advertisement—arguably one of the state’s most arresting—is just as effective today as it was when it was erected in 2019, largely because of its simplicity. The photo captures a ponytailed woman lying on her stomach and looking down the barrel of a military-style machine gun, a chain of gold bullets draped around her waist, her legs anchored by a giant pair of cowboy boots. Below, the phrase “$40 machine gun rentals” is stamped across the billboard in large block letters without further explanation. “It’s so eye-catching it’s hard to replace it with a new copy,” Kyle Harrison, the range’s general manager, told me. Top Gun Range has fully embraced its role as a purveyor of experiences that are limited to conflict zones in most parts of the world, including in Texas, where the purchase of fully automatic machine guns—as opposed to semiautomatic assault rifles such as AR-15s—is tightly regulated. (Full automatics fire continually as long as the trigger is held; semiautomatics only fire once for each pull of the trigger.) Each month, Top Gun’s ads and word of mouth bring in hundreds of customers, Harrison told me. When a potential customer calls the business and is placed on hold, she hears not Muzak but instead a recording of the staccato cracks of automatic weapons. Renting a machine gun there only requires being of legal age to sign an online waiver and handing over a driver’s license—as well as taking an introductory class if needed—before strapping on a pair of earmuffs and protective eyewear. (Minors need to be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian.) Inside, a large portion of the business’s front room has been converted into a suburban Texas man cave, complete with comfy leather furniture arranged around a big-screen TV that hangs above a fireplace. Mounted deer heads stare down from one wall, and a row of arcade games lines another. As novel as they might sound to non–gun owners, machine gun rentals are not a new phenomenon. In recent decades, gun sellers have used them as a marketing gimmick to get new customers in the door, particularly in cities with large numbers of international travelers and tourists, such as Las Vegas and Houston. In the last year after the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas has done nothing to make it more difficult to obtain weapons designed as killing machines. As of September 2021, Texans have been able to carry handguns without a permit. Assuming a buyer doesn’t have a felony conviction or certain misdemeanor convictions, the state’s only restrictions on purchases of semiautomatic weapons are age (buyers must be at least eighteen) and money (the guns typically cost between $500 and $2,000). Meanwhile, machine gun rental facilities such as Top Gun have proliferated across the state, often marketing themselves as video game experiences come to life. They’ve flown under the radar and seem to be far less controversial than the video games their experiences are modeled on, which politicians such as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick frequently blame for mass killings. Rental facilities offer rare access to fully automatic weapons. When they’re not being fired on a battlefield, such weapons are tightly regulated and require extensive background checks and special licensing to purchase. “Those fully automatic guns you see in the movies are rare in society because they’re quite hard to get a hold of,” said Ryan Busse, a onetime firearms-manufacturer executive who now works as a senior advisor at Giffords, a gun-safety group founded by former congresswoman and gun-violence survivor Gabby Giffords. “That’s what piques the curiosity of out-of-country tourists, particularly those from East Asian countries like Singapore and South Korea, where civilian gun ownership is heavily restricted. They come to places like Texas and Nevada and they’re like, ‘Holy s—, you people can shoot machine guns in this country?’ ” In recent years, many Texas shooting ranges have mastered the art of marketing on Instagram, uploading streams of images of rare guns, instructional videos, and often the same sorts of playful, humorous skits and dances found on TikTok. At Top Gun Range, for example, the business has installed a branded backdrop in front of which customers can pose for photos with machine guns. Instructors also offer to take slow-motion videos of patrons firing machine guns from multiple angles, free of charge. When they make their way to Instagram, the videos are often set to music and begin with close-ups of the guns before breaking into slow-motion, Rambo-style shots of customers unloading fully automatic weapons as shell casings fly and white swirls of smoke fill the air. The guns are not presented as killing machines or even dangerous tools; they’re symbolic extensions of an exhilarating lifestyle rooted in independence, self-reliance, and general badassery. That’s certainly the case at Texas Gun Experience in Grapevine, a city twenty miles northwest of Dallas, where shooters of all experience levels are welcome. The family-run gun seller, which has been in operation for more than three decades, markets its $250 “gamer” package by enthusiastically blurring reality and simulated fantasy, encouraging customers to “step into your own first-person shooter and become legend.” Whether you’re a fan of Black Ops, Elden Ring, Modern Warfare, or Mortal Kombat, the website notes, “Texas Gun Experience can make your virtual life a reality with the opportunity to shoot some of the most iconic video game guns.” On the website, amid images of rentable machine guns and lists of movies in which the weapons have appeared, would-be shooters can compare statistics about each gun, such as its caliber, magazine capacity, and maximum rate of fire. On “full auto Fridays,” the range offers customers discounted access to four different machine guns for the entire day. Seven hours south, at Ox Ranch, located about thirty miles northwest of Uvalde, machine gun rentals are presented on an extensive menu that groups weapons by the wars in which they were used. Following in the footsteps of your Army veteran grandfather, you can rent a Browning .50-caliber machine gun—informally known as “Ma Deuce”—and fire it from atop a real-life Sherman tank, the same iconic vehicle that helped the Allies bring Nazi Germany to its knees at the end of World War II. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, you can add a Vietnam-era flamethrower to your arsenal for an extra $350. “Blow up a pyramid of watermelons, a car, and much more!” the ranch’s website urges. “We would love to hear your crazy idea and make it a reality!” Who is drawn to rent a machine gun? There is no prototypical customer at Top Gun Range, my instructor, Troy Hatch, a 32-year-old Houstonian with a passion for big guns, told me when I stopped by earlier this month. Though regular customers are as varied and diverse as Houston itself, the machine gun rentals do draw two outside groups consistently. The first are tourists from blue states such as California, New Jersey, and New York who are hungry for the kind of raw, full-throttle shooting experience they can’t get back home. The second group—echoing Busse’s assessment—are international visitors who stop by after a day of upscale shopping at the Galleria and are seeking a novel experience they associate with Texas mythology. “We’re also popular with flight crews from the Middle East and Asia,” Hatch said. “When they have a layover in Houston, they want to do two things: eat great food and shoot machine guns.” After driving by the Top Gun poster in Houston, I decided to give the range a test. Upon entry, I was taken aback by the imposing wall of around thirty matte-black machine guns from around the world. Anxiously contemplating what I’d gotten myself into and uncertain how to decide among the weapons, I asked Hatch to choose for me. He was adept at translating weapons vernacular into ordinary English. Hatch assured me that my nervousness was common, and he opted to give me some of the range’s most popular weapons, the kind of weapons, he said, most customers recognize from video games such as Fortnite—an AR-15, an M16 rifle, an Uzi submachine gun, and a belt-fed HK23, a lightweight West German machine gun developed in the early 1970s. Were it not being repaired, Hatch told me I could’ve tried out a Browning 1919A4, a 308-gauge belt-fed machine gun that soldiers might have encountered on a battlefield nearly a century ago. “This is that Rambo, Arnold Schwarzenegger gun,” Hatch said, repeatedly lifting the imposing, thirty-pound weapon like an Olympic curl bar. “This thing will shake the wall; it’s a beast!” My shooting experience lasted about thirty minutes. Despite my initial anxiety, I grew more and more comfortable each time I picked up a new weapon. By the time I reached my third gun, my brow was sweaty and my heart was pounding, but I’d grown accustomed to consistently hitting my target’s torso, ten yards away. I was able to move seamlessly from single-action to automatic fire, holding tight as bullet casings bounced off my forehead and smoke filled my nostrils. Each time I pulled the trigger, even on those rifles small enough to be folded up and carried inside a backpack, the brute force unleashed was shocking. Two hundred and sixty rounds of controlled chaos later, I’d racked up a $300 bill—“a light day,” as Hatch labeled it. “I have some customers who come in here and drop thirteen hundred dollars in a single session, especially if they’re part of a larger group,” he added. When asked what customers take away from shooting machine guns, Harrison, the range’s manager, invoked a larger, public-spirited mission: “to share our love of shooting with the world.” Some customers are adrenaline junkies checking a weapon off a bucket list, he noted; others are history or technology buffs who want to experience a gun they’ve read about over the years. More women have been coming to the range recently, Harrison said, mostly because they’re interested in self-defense. Other customers walk through the front door in search of something less identifiable, a feeling of release they can’t easily find elsewhere. “A lot of our customers have high-stress jobs,” Hatch explained. “They shoot a couple hundred rounds and compare it to therapy. They tell me it’s better than therapy, actually, and cheaper, too.” Busse, the former firearms executive, believes machine gun rentals reveal something troubling about what our culture has normalized. “They point to the fact that in the United States the balance between responsibility and freedom is out of whack,” he said. “If it’s this much of a curiosity for people from other countries, if it’s become this sort of fetishized tourism, that should tell us something.” Sitting in my car in the parking lot, I needed a few minutes to slow my breathing and move beyond the strange feeling of a phantom rifle pressed against my shoulder. When I turned on the vehicle, I was struck by how pathetic the rev of the engine sounded after firing a machine gun. I had a new appreciation for machine guns. I was also more terrified by the idea of encountering one in public than I ever have been.

FROM TSRA HB 129, HB 565, HB 761, HB 781, HB 925, HB 996, HB 1072, HB 1331, HB 1388, HB 2075, HB2275, HB 2744, HB 2916, HB 3087, HB 3088, HB 3996, HB 4364 & HB 5188 -- to view the text of any of these bills, visit https://house.texas.gov/research/ During the 2023 Texas legislative session, more than a DOZEN bills have been filed to discriminate against law-abiding young adults aged 18-20 by prohibiting them from exercising their Second Amendment rights. The legislation bans them from purchasing -- and in some cases, possessing -- any firearm or certain types of firearms. Some of these bills focus solely on that prohibition or some variation of it, while other bills include that among a laundry list of other restrictions on the Second Amendment rights of all age groups. At age 18, citizens are eligible to vote, serve in the military (83% of United States Marine Corps enlistees are 20 or younger), and be drafted. An 18-to-20-year-old may be tried as an adult for crimes in state and federal courts. Young adults may serve in law enforcement, may serve on a jury, enter into contracts, sue and be sued, get married and own property. Restricting their right to purchase and own firearms is unconstitutional and will not reduce crime. In the landmark Bruen case, the U.S. Supreme Court made clear that for a firearm regulation to pass muster under the Second Amendment, the government must "identify a well-established and representative historical analogue." Regarding restrictions on young adults purchasing guns, this cannot be done. There were no laws restricting 18-20-year-olds from purchasing firearms at the time of the American founding; in fact, 18-to-20-year-olds were required to be part of the militia and arm themselves. The age of majority for the militia continues to be 18. Making further state action unnecessary in this policy area, the federal government instituted a 3-10 day federal waiting period for 18-20-year-olds purchasing firearms as part of the 2022 Bipartisan "Safer" Communities Act gun control law. During this time, the FBI is tasked with conducting a so-called "enhanced" background check on the prospective purchaser. This includes an examination of state juvenile records and contacting local law enforcement in the jurisdiction in which the purchaser resides. (Another bill, HB 324, requires FFLs to report the transfer of any semi-automatic rifle to a person under 21 years of age to the county sheriff. Under the BSCA federal act, local law enforcement is already notified of all FFL firearm transfers to 18-20-year-olds.) In 2019, Dr. Gary Kleck published the research paper "Regulating Guns Among Young Adults" in the American Journal of Criminal Justice. This study assessed the impact of state bans on gun carrying among persons aged 18 to 20 on rates of murder, robbery and aggravated assault. The results indicated no significant effect of these bans on any of the three violent crime rates. A second study assessed the impact of the federal ban on the purchase of handguns by persons aged 18 to 20. Results indicated there was no impact on the 18 to 20-year-old share of arrests for homicide, robbery, or aggravated assault. The Texas House Select Committee on Community Safety is expected to hear some or all of these measures at their Tuesday, April 18, meeting at 2:00 pm, in Room E2.012 of the Capitol Extension, in Austin. TSRA will notify you once the official committee agenda is posted later this week.

>If that's too difficult for you to grasp, oh well. Everybody gets into the sport for different reasons. If you want to be as realistic as possible., as you are advocating for you need to join NCOWS or one of the other reenactment groups where you stay in a period tent, only eat food from that period, actually use period weapons, and period cast bullets. Some people enjoy the sport more for the dress and accoutrements. Others join primarily for the shooting. There should be a place for everyone, and if not there is another organization that is. Quoting it as a fact that nobody shot with two hands before the 1960's is a very poor argument. It may not have been the most common, but it was not unheard of. As a child I always shot with two hands because I couldn't hold the gun any other way, and then continued as an adult, it wasn't due to any specific government training. I "wish" that some of the clubs in my area would have more variety in the stage descriptions with smaller and further targets but the masses vote with their pocketbooks and they are saying close and big, and closer and bigger. I do not wish to buy land and set up my own club so I will play with what is available!

My mom had it done, and she was better within 2 hours of the surgery, more motion and less pain. Wish she had done it years ago, but doesn’t shoot competitively.

On Tuesday, April 4, the Texas House Select Committee on Community Safety will hear testimony the following pro- and anti-gun bills listed below at 2:00pm, or upon adjournment of the House in Room E2.012 of the Texas Capitol. Please make plans to attend this hearing and voice your support of, or opposition to, these measures! For those persons who will be testifying, information for in-person witness registration, can be found here. If you cannot attend tomorrow's hearing, please contact committee members in SUPPORT of HB 2705, HB 2960, HB 3137, HB 4327, & HB 4827 and in OPPOSITION to HB 1617 & HB 3938. Texas residents who wish to electronically submit comments in FAVOR of, or AGAINST, these measures can do so until the hearing is adjourned by visiting here. A live video broadcast of this hearing will be available here. PRO-Gun legislation being heard: House Bill 2705 (Rep. Richard Hayes-R) Removes short-barreled rifles and short-barreled shotguns from the list of prohibited weapons in Texas. These items will still be regulated under the National Firearms Act at the federal level. House Bill 2960 (Rep. Briscoe Cain-R) Simplifies provisions relating to defenses to prosecution against charges of carrying in a prohibited location by streamlining notice requirements, cleaning up provisions from last session's permitless carry bill. House Bill 3137 (Rep. Carrie Isaac-R) Restricts municipalities or counties under the state firearms preemption law from requiring firearm owners to obtain liability insurance. House Bill 4327 (Rep. Cecil Bell-R) Establishes a 90-day grace period for renewing a License To Carry which has expired. House Bill 4827 (Rep. Terri Leo-Wilson-R) Creates definitions of "educational institution" and "school" in the Penal Code to limit the ability of controllers of properties that are not schools to designate themselves as such, claiming that educational activities take place on their premises and therefore firearms are prohibited from those locations. ANTI-Gun legislation being heard: House Bill 1617 (Rep. Claudia Ordaz-D) & House Bill 3938 (Rep. Joe Moody-D) Together, these bills expand notice requirements for persons being charged with certain misdemeanor offenses and who are subject to protective orders, some of which are issued without due process, that they are prohibited from possessing firearms and requiring any firearms in their possession to be surrendered within 10 days. The notice provisions do not include language that alerts defendants to their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and no methods of permissible firearms disposition, or provisions for return if a disqualifying condition is removed, are outlined in the bills.

There has been more than one occasion where I as a new shooter would like to have clarification of threads and was unable, even within a few hours of the original posting. Thereby, slowing down my and other new shooters learning curve. When new to the wire, I didn't want to open a new thread about a closed thread even when I did not understand something! If closed by OP, that is fine but a comment to that effect would be appropriate in many cases.

You all are making me think about selling mine on GunBroker!

Winston S. Churchill supposedly said that "anyone who was not a liberal at 20 years of age had no heart, while anyone who was still a liberal at 40 had no head."

I'm not sure there is a single politician that I trust! That said, she is trying hard to position herself as the moderate Republican Vice Presidential candidate to the more extreme Republican Nominee for President. It might be a good strategy; she has a lot of potential but alas it is only potential.

Schools and many other places are targeted because of the lack of armed individuals (civilian or otherwise). From a News Article of the event (see link below), the location of this event like many others were chosen (according to her/his own writings) because of the lack of armed individuals at the site. The original primary target was abandoned “because of a threat assessment by the suspect – there’s too much security – decided not to,”. NSFW Body Cam Video link below Links www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue2tZa4hT0c cnn.com/2023/03/28/us/covenant-school-shooting-nashville-tennessee-tuesday/index.html

I was thinking of "el vieja classic cowboy" the costume category that requires a walker with holsters and saddlebag.

Went last November and hope to go this November. Well worth going to and situated in the middle of the US, but unfortunately it is still about a 20-hour roundtrip drive!

No need, you just need to convince him to reload for you. If necessary, reward him with a penny a round. He will use his own room.

Wish I could shoot like this Beverly Hillbillies Clip, an example of how CBS used to show gun ownership in 1963. An example of how CBS showed gun ownership in 1963: The Beverly Hillbillies (crimeresearch.org) And more blatant examples of television show media bias on guns from the Crime Prevention Research Center! television show media bias on guns (crimeresearch.org)

.13 - .15 if once or twice fired.

The Pinkertons or the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Interesting Fact, The Pinkerton were banned in Ohio because they had gotten bigger than the US Army and people became fearful that they could be hired as a private mercenary army.

The only way to get away from the "posse of Postal Inspectors" Butch Cassidy: Then you jump first. Sundance Kid: No, I said. Butch Cassidy: What's the matter with you? Sundance Kid: I can't swim. Butch Cassidy: Why you crazy, the fall will probably kill you.

The preceding link goes to an address associated with the primary poster, and any clicks are attributed to them. If you want to subscribe or view anonymously you need to go to https://www.thetrace.org/

This week, the Texas House Committee on Community Safety held its first public hearing on a number of firearm-related measures, so please contact committee members and urge them to SUPPORT or to OPPOSE these bills as indicated below: Support House Bill 175 (Rep. Matt Schaefer-R) Expands expungement provisions from last session’s constitutional carry law to include persons who were placed on deferred adjudication community supervision for an offense of unlawful carry of a handgun committed prior to the effective date of the 2021 law. House Bill 636 (Rep. Jared Patterson-R) Codifies a 2018 Attorney General opinion to allow election judges who are issued an LTC, to carry handguns in a polling place during early voting and on Election Day. This is a reasonable change to the Texas Penal Code, although NRA-ILA would also support legislation eliminating this unnecessary “gun-free zone” in its entirety. House Bill 1229 (Rep. Cody Harris-R) Prohibits state and child placement agencies from requiring foster parents to disclose specific types of firearms and to report any newly-acquired or relinquished guns in the household. NRA-ILA does not oppose foster parents being asked to disclose whether they own firearms or other weapons, but we do object to them being required to provide specific descriptions or a registry of lawfully-owned guns to a state or child placement agency. House Bill 1760 (Rep. Cole Hefner-R) Addresses roving “gun-free” zones created when school activities take place off-campus in public buildings or venues such as the Capitol, zoos and libraries, by limiting restrictions on firearms possession to actual premises owned by and under control of a school, or locations where high school, collegiate, and UIL activities as described in 46.03(a-1)(2) are taking place. Without this important clarification, the “school activities” provision in 46.03(a)(1) can be misapplied to include anyplace students are ever present or anywhere "educational activities" are taking place off-campus. House Bill 2454 (Rep. Ryan Guillen-R) Creates the offense of knowingly acquiring a firearm for a person that is prohibited from possessing a firearm under state or federal law. “Straw purchases” are already illegal under federal law, and this bill allows state and local law enforcement to charge and prosecute for similar offenses. Oppose House Bill 902 (Rep. Joe Moody-D) Creates the offense of knowingly purchasing a magazine or knowingly receiving a magazine as a loan or gift from another while the actor is prohibited from possessing under state or federal law the type of firearm for which the magazine is designed or made. Extending firearm possession prohibitions to firearm magazines invites the type of private transfer restriction or so-called “universal background check” schemes that gun control advocates seek to impose on firearms and ammunition, which are unenforceable without gun registration. Such plans are even more ineffectual for magazines, as they are not typically serialized or otherwise marked to facilitate a regulatory scheme of this type. House Bill 2076 (Rep. Vikki Goodwin-D) Expands the current state domestic violence firearms prohibition to include "dating relationships:" relying on definitions in the Texas Family Code that exceed the scope of relationships contemplated in federal law to include anyone with whom you've ever had a romantic relationship. Under the current state prohibitions, “boyfriends” and other intimates are already covered if the relationship has an actual “family” or "household" component (children in common, cohabitation, etc.).

Three: Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizonia. But thinking about Wyoming and possibly an international shoot. Only 5 clubs in Texas for me.

That is very close to the shooters perspective. If monthly request a reshoot because obviously needs more practice on that specific stage, but since an annual to just let the time stand and prevent potential conflict . Shooter was still able to win category, but did not know it at the time.

True, but I doubt if those that are "protesting" even know that it is a constitutional right. Our kids are being educated by Tik-Tok, and virtually none have a clue where to find a true news source anymore.

it was a three day annual event and the scores are never world ending, even at EOT.