Canadians with the urge to travel can ask themselves plenty of questions to decide where they want to go: Do I want sun and sand? Do I want an all-inclusive resort? Or, perhaps, this question: Do I want to shoot the M60 machine gun used by Rambo?
A new gun range in Las Vegas is betting that Canadians tourists, like travellers from other countries that ban weapons, feel the allure of firing the guns they've probably only ever seen in action movies.
Machine Guns Vegas, a 10,000-square foot facility located 10 minutes from the Strip, opened earlier this month. It's web site boasts an "experience we like to call 'Las Vegas on FULL AUTO.'" When you've got this many guns a blazin', it only makes sense that you speak in FULL CAPS.
Like Vegas itself, which has always thrived on fulfilling visitors' desires to indulge their illicit pleasures and curiosities, the gun range has several packages intended to satisfy whatever fantasy you might have that involves packing heat: The "Femme Fatale" package comes with an Uzi and any handgun; the "MOB" package comes with a Tommy gun, a pistol with a silencer and a 12 gauge shotgun; and for people who are bored of playing war on their video game systems, the "Seal Team Six" package comes with a semi-automatic rifle so advanced it can only be named with a series of letters and numbers, the MR556A1, the M249 light machine gun, the aforementioned M60, a pistol with silencer, three targets and, for good measure, a T-shirt. The "Compound" package, the most expensive at $699 US, includes an M60, five handguns, five semi-automatics and five full automatics.
What's that you say? You'd love to go shoot some guns but you're travelling with children? Not to worry, friend. Machine Gun Vegas also has a "Kids" package that will outfit your child with a .22 pistol and a .22 rifle.
There are several shooting ranges in Las Vegas, but Genghis Cohen, one of Machine Gun Vegas' managing partners, told the New York Times the range will stand apart thanks to its high-end aspirations.
"We want it to have a Melrose boutique feel to it," he told the newspaper. "It would be like a boutique style of guns." He added, "We will have artwork on the walls."
And to go along with the art and the guns, a bevy of bosomy hostesses. This is Vegas, after all.
Dave McGinn