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Posted: 3/31/2009 1:14:51 PM EDT
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Like Knob Creek and Big Sandy to name two.
Do you think that their days are numbered with the cost of ammo, the availibility of ammo, and the end of cheap surplus ammo ? There is no question that machine guns in general, but belt fed machine guns in particular are a game for the better healed shooter. But you would have to be pretty well off to enjoy three days (and two nights) of shooting with machineguns and belt fed machine guns in particular, mini guns and all that if you have to supply them with factory ammo or even reloads. |
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You don't realize that there are people out there with more money than you can ever think of. For some people, dropping tens of thousands of dollars is nothing. I wish I could say that I was one of these people, but I am not.
I just though of the post last week that had a link for a Mini-Gun that was $250,000. 
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Oh I think I realize that more than most people.
I also realize that some, possibly a lot of guys at those shoots are dealers/manufacturers who are shooting stuff they are able to buy/build because they are dealers, that they couldn't afford otherwise as individuals. But they still have to come up with the ammo. Shooting your MG42 back when you could buy truck loads of 8mm for a song are long gone unfortunately. I attended the Big Sandy shoot this past weekend. I wasn't all that impressed. One of the guys I know there told me that the actual shooting was way down from what it normally has been. The thought came to me as I was walking back to the truck at the end of the day that without the surplus ammo, a lot of these guys are going to have a hard time feeding these things. Of course there are always the Mike Dillon's of the world who can go out there and shoot their mini guns out of their private heliocopters. But what percentage of the guys at these shoots have that kind of money ? Probably more than I think, I'll grant you that. Then there is the price of the guns. I know a guy who owns multiple belt fed machineguns. The catch is that he bought them when they were giving them away 40-50 years ago. If he had to buy them today, no way he could afford them. But, in order to shoot them, he still has to afford the ammo. Once again, when you could feed your Vickers or Maxim with surplus that cost more to ship than it did to buy, it wasn't that hard. Today ? When they put all the fresh "product" out there to shoot, there was a few minutes of mad shooting but after that there was a whole lot more rifle shooting than machinegun shooting. |
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Quoted:
Most of these guys aren't light weights in the Title 2 sphere - they have sources the "online" crowd can only dream about. No kidding. One of the local guys who has a couple of belt feds has a barn that has pallets of 8mm he got back when the getting was good. He figured it out, he could shoot 2k a month and not run out for 24 years or something stupid. He's got a nice pile of .308 and 06 as well. |
I go to one MG shoot a year and save ammo for that purpose. This year I’ll be burning ammo left over from last year and when that’s gone I’m done, time to go home or just sit back and observe.
It’s frustrating and a pain but I shoot a lot of wolf ammo; dirty and stinky as hell and stuck cases but that’s all I can afford. I love shooting and I hope to keep going as long as I can. You’d be surprised there are some big buck guys there but a lot of them are just like me and this is their vacation or something they save up to do. I do believe that the cost of ammo has definitely put a damper on the show. It will be a sad day if there are no more MG shoots and all you can do is go to a gun museum and look at a gun in a case. 
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Has the cost of ammo put a damper on things? Definitely.
But some of those same guys who bought MGs back when they were cheap also had the foresight to buy bulk ammo –– 50k, 100k rounds –– back when it was cheap. And they still have hundreds of pallets stashed away. Over on subguns.com, they usta say you weren't a true machine-gun owner until the weight of your ammo cracked the slab under your home. You'd be surprised as how often that actually used to happen, and how many MG owners still have vast inventories of ammo. It sucks to be buying ammo for an MG today. |
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I can afford all the machine gun ammo I shoot.
But, all I got is one subgun that is cheap to feed. My hat is off to those guys that bought that much ammo when the getting was good. I got a pretty impressive amount of it myself but nothing like you guys are talking about. Of course I bought mine to shoot out of rifles. "He figured it out, he could shoot 2k a month and not run out for 24 years or something stupid." That is how I buy .22 ammo. I estimated how much longer I am going to be able to enjoy shooting. Then I figured how many rounds a month that would give me if I couldn't buy anymore starting now. If you do that, you will be surprised at the number you come up with (maybe). One lesson this taught me is having 100,000 rounds of loaded ammo isn't a lot if you are in any way an avid shooter. That being said, one three day weekend with a belt fed might increase that number by magnitudes. |
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