It’s an amusement park with a bang!
Machine Gun America, a controversial Orlando, Fla. attraction that puts automatic weapons and military-grade firearms in the hands of gun lovers as young as 13, is opening its doors this weekend.
“Most of these are not eligible to be owned by an individual,” the venue’s Brooklyn-born General Manager Bruce Nierenberg told the Daily News after naming off a stockpile of firearms available, including Uzis, Tommy Guns, AK47s and M5s.
“They’re built for wars and those kinds of things,” he said.
The new facility, offering 10 firing lanes and military-grade simulators roughly six miles from Disney, is strictly against users bringing their own weapons, and anyone from ages 13 to 17 must be accompanied by an adult.
Each guest is also paired up with a mandatory trained instructor, called a range safety officer, who guides them every step of the way.
“We’ve had people who have never touched a firearm in their life, and then we have people who are aficionados,” Nierenberg said of their pre-opening guests.
“I can’t tell you how many times people have come in here and said, ‘Ah that’s my gun!'” he said of U.S. veterans who recognized firearms they used in combat.
Should a 13-year-old want that same experience, say with a machine gun, Nierenberg said that’s entirely on the table — at least, a pint-sized version. Anything larger may be unsafe.
The hair-raising experience doesn’t come without backlash from anti-gun activists, however.
“It’s simply further evidence of an out-of-control gun culture that prioritizes the fetishization of weapons over human life itself,” Ladd Everitt, director of communications for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told The News.
“You have to wonder about the mentality of parents who would let their child fire a military-style rifle at such an establishment after what happened at Bullets and Burgers,” he said, while naming the Nevada tour company that shuttled a 9-year-old girl to a gun range where she accidentally shot and killed her instructor with an Uzi submachine gun.
That trained guide, an Army Reserve veteran, was standing to her left side, guiding her, when the child apparently lost control of the weapon.
“Good safety procedures were not followed,” Nierenberg said of that horrific event while particularly pointing out the girl’s young age and the size of the firearm she was handling.
“There’s some common sense involved,” he said.
He chalked the majority of gun critics to those who are unfamiliar with guns “and what we’re doing” or those who are “just categorically against firearms.”
“Weapons have been a part of life and it’s been a part of civilization, the rise and fall of civilization, and quite frankly we’ve needed firearms to defend our freedoms,” he argued. “It’s directly related to the fact that we’ve been able to acquire our freedom and defend it.”
Branching off of that thought, the facility offers a range of shooting themes, one called “special ops” — to make you “feel like a national hero.”
ON A MOBILE DEVICE? WATCH THE VIDEO HERE
