I was in the company of my male friends when the weekend came up. They mentioned parties, early trips home, “chillin’” but then one friend asked, “What about you? You could probably come with me to State Street if you want.”
“’Can’t. I’m reporting this weekend,” I replied.
The three of them paused. “All of it?” they asked.
“Most of it,” I guessed.
“That must suck.”
“Not really, no. I’ll let you decide.”
Funny enough, I don’t think the conversation came full circle.
I called up the Knob Creek shoot on YouTube and clicked the first link. We watched hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel explode all at once. The tracer bullets —shooting-ese for bullets that light up when shot, what action movie junkies think is the norm — cut through the barrels like lasers. I was later told that only every fifth bullet was a tracer. It seemed like something out of Star Wars rather than Western Kentucky.
Nevertheless, the conversation was soon reduced to watching YouTube videos of “sexi gurls n’ guns.”
“Yep, here we are —Bullitt County,” Stephen Karney shouted behind his shoulder. “Kind of ironic if you ask me.”
His line jarred me out of my half-hour-on, half-hour-off type of sleep I assume in any car ride anywhere.
The other two, Kathryn Wargo and her brother Andrew, laughed at Stephen’s observation, so I laughed too and caught the joke several miles later.
After almost going to Fort Knox but making a U-turn 50 yards from the guard station and witnessing the aftermath of a very gruesome car accident, we arrived at our hotel. Out of excitement I made a Twitter account and updated it immediately. It read, “adamliebendorfer just landed in Kentucky.” To date, I have still only tweeted once.
We arrived too late to justify going to the shoot Friday night so we ordered pizza and when the remainder of our group came we went to bed. I made due with an inflatable mat, and fell asleep quickly, dreaming of diesel barrels and bullets hitting them.
From my experience, Second Amendment Club members are early risers. Half of the people in my room were eating breakfast by the time I put on my shoes. We left for the “The World’s Largest Machine Gun Shoot and Military Gun Show” at Knob Creek around 8:30 a.m.
We passed the front gates at about 9 a.m. and I was given ear protection. It wasn’t long before I needed it. We walked for about a hundred yards and were greeted by a cannon.
Many people unfamiliar with guns would think the differences between a cannon and, say, a .50 caliber machine gun or a mini gun wouldn’t be very apparent, which is entirely wrong. Throughout the day I heard a wide range of rumors — that it was custom-made or that it was a Civil War replica. But regardless, the 20-or-so-feet long cannon could rattle the ground at the secondary shooting ranges, 300 yards away.
After wandering around with the OU students for a while, my sore shoulders reminded me of the camcorder and tripod I was carrying and, more importantly, why I was there.
I let the gun enthusiasts do their thing as I went off into the gun show and did mine. I set up shots showing random machine gunners blast away boats and cars burning down range and random people joking. Satisfied, I headed for the gun show.
Standing there, in the thick of bristling gun nuts, I felt as out of place as, well, a pacifist Obama supporter at the world’s largest machine gun shoot. Before we even got to the gate, I had noticed everything ranging from a hammer and sickle superimposed on Obama’s face on a bumper sticker to the ever-direct “Fuck Obama” t-shirts.
One older couple asked exactly what I was doing standing there for 45 minutes and videotaping bystanders. “Who are you with?” they asked with their eyes.
“The Liberal Press,” I considered telling them.
Aside from that I had no way of showing my loose political affiliation, so I kept shooting and tried to figure out how to act distinctly conservative. If the extent of your gun education is late-night Call of Duty tournaments, you’ll be surprised to learn how hard this is.
All the “journalizing” I was told I was doing cooked up an appetite. I got in line to get a hot dog and sat down to review my video shots. Then, really out of nowhere, in bright red on the screen appeared “LOW BATTERY, CHANGE BATTERY QUICKLY.”
I had choice words for my camcorder and Canon.
I would have to conserve my battery until the night shoot, I concluded, and hopefully get those precious ten seconds when an entire gun range seems to go up in flames.
To pass the time, I called my girlfriend to see what her t-shirt size was. Nothing says romance like a t-shirt with a machine gun emblazoned on the front. Right before she answered, a message appeared on the screen: “BATT LOW BATT LOW BATT LOW.”
My praise for Motorola was colorful.
The rest of the day, aside from taking pictures, I looked for gifts and soaked up as much I could about the gun culture.
As the sun started to roll over the hills, I knew it was time to hold my spot for the night shoot. I headed for the overlook of the club house and there was already a throng of people knotted toward the front. Over the next twenty minutes, I squeezed and dodged my way to the front, taking a few people’s spots as they left for the bathroom.
Once I got to the front, I propped my camcorder up on a patch of shingled roof next to me. Then I spoke to the security guard nearby for the next two hours.
“Do they really worry that somebody’s going to jump off the roof?” I asked, thinking of the headline.
“You’d be surprised how people get set off at a machine gun shoot. Well, they’re machine guns, son. Some people get pretty giddy,” he answered.
That was the high point of our conversation, but he did tell me that they were expecting 15,000 people throughout the weekend.
Before I knew it, all that could be heard was the guy on the megaphone giving orders to the shooters. I flipped on the camcorder, feeling the giddiness the security had told me about. I started rolling the video as they were getting ready.
About five seconds before they began firing I heard a beeping. My camcorder now read, “NEW BATTERY” and it flickered off.
In the process of staring at my camcorder in dread, I had, for whatever reason, taken off my ear protection. Then, and only then, did the machine guns start up.
I couldn’t believe it. I had missed The Shot.
But whatever kind of language I was saying —or even thinking— was droned out by the soothing rhythmic thumps of the mini-gun and the barrels.
I was falling in an out of slumber when Stephen woke me up in the van Sunday afternoon on our way back.
“Would there be any way you could upload movies from my camera onto your computer?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said. “Let’s look at these…”
And lo and behold there it was, roughly five seconds of adrenaline-pumping, incinerating bliss.
“Steve, you’re a godsend,” I told him.
-Adam Liebendorfer
