Guns and Whiskey

About two weeks ago, I joined the Park City Rotary Club.  I've never had experience with any of the groups like Rotary, Elks, Masons, or Kiwanis so I can't offer a comparison of one versus another.  I have heard from people about other Rotary groups and it appears that Park City's club is a bit of a fun-loving, irreverent exception to the norm.

As an example, last night I attended one of the social outings, Guns and Whiskey.  We went to the new and elaborate Park City Gun Club for some shooting, and then headed over to High West for a bit of social drinking.  We ended up having dinner over at Butchers.  We were reminded over and over that it was crucial to shoot the guns and THEN drink the whiskey.

At the gun range, they have an incredible number of weapons you can fire.  You pick the gun, buy some ammo and a target, and blast away.  Here we have my friend Melissa and her son Noah.  They picked the Osombie target, which was a zombie version of Osama bin Laden.

Melissa used a smaller handgun while Noah pounded away with a collection of handguns and rifles.

We learned that if we encounter the Zombie Apocalypse, the trick is to refill weapons and hand them to Noah.  He was quite the excellent shot.

I shot with a few .40 caliber pistols, an AK47 and some form of fully automatic machine gun.  This is my AK47 right before I shot.  No, I did not leave the target that close in front of me.

My first attempts were with the .40 caliber pistols.  I had a decent group going at 30 feet.  Then I tried a Glock I didn't like at 40 feet and started spraying them a bit.

My favorite gun was the AK47.  It felt good when you fired and at 50 feet, I could keep everything fairly tight and fire quickly.

My final attempt was with a fully automatic machine gun.  I couldn't manage more than two or three shots before the gun started to move on me.  The bummer was that I kept shooting low.  Then one of the employees pointed out that the mechanical sight was about 2-3 inches above the gun barrel.  Aim at the center and they should all go low.  I was excited to discover this but then found out I was out of ammo.

As I mentioned, you could fire almost anything.  This is Christina, last year's Rotary club president.  She is about to fire a .50 caliber rifle.  It is a closely related version of what the Army snipers use to kill people over a mile away.  Each shell was about 6 inches long.

Her husband Trevor is firing a chain-fed machine gun.

Thanks to Cathy King for setting this up.  I have no intention of running out to buy a gun nor do I plan to be a regular at the gun range, but it was fun to see how it felt to shoot things that you never get to see.

OK, actually with Utah's open carry laws, you might see any of these weapons at the local shopping mall.