Richard Parker has a problem with his 50-calibre sniper rifle, but firepower isn't it. Made by British firearms manufacturer Accuracy International, the rifle's cigar-sized bullet reputedly slams into distant targets with more force than Dirty Harry's .44 Magnum at point-blank range. 'With the right ammunition, you can take out a tank,' says the 57-year-old marketing executive from Indiana.
Accuracy isn't the problem either, not for a true marksman: Parker can hit a skull-sized target at 2,000 metres. No, Parker's problem is this: where do you fire a weapon of such power and range that American gun-control advocates believe it poses a serious threat to post-9/11 national security? Answer: Knob Creek Range in Kentucky, America, home to the world's largest machine-gun show, a three-day blast-fest that is - outside of actual combat - an unrivalled display of the deadliest firearms ever made.
Knob Creek is in, fittingly, Bullitt County. A former munitions test site tucked into a cleft in the hills, its main range is about 300 metres long and is littered with old cars, refrigerators, stoves and gas cylinders. None of these targets last long under the withering gunfire unleashed by dozens of shooters in 30-minute bursts. 'Ready on the left?' announces the shoot director over the public address system. 'Ready on the right? Okay, let's rock and roll!'
What follows is a crashing wall of noise, unendurable without ear protection. Only an expert can isolate and savour the snap and crackle of specific weapons: Gatling, Thompson, Browning, Heckler & Koch, Sten, Uzi, M16, AK47. Then there's the minigun, with its six whirring barrels firing up to 6,000 rounds a minute. It spits out bullet casings and is painfully loud: imagine someone slowly cutting your ears with an unmuffled chainsaw.
Stacked high on tables behind the shooters are boxes and clips of live ammunition, including tracer and armour-piercing rounds. It is Friday, the first day of the show, and during a break in the shooting, spectators are allowed on the range to stroll amid colandered fridges and stoves. Some form a reverential huddle around a burned-out, bullet-peppered Ford Lexington. Many spectators will try out the weapons themselves. An M249 light machine gun - known as an 'Iraqi Street Sweeper' by US soldiers - costs more than a dollar a bullet to fire. The minigun is US$650 for 1,200 rounds, the most expensive 12 seconds of your life.
For gun lovers, Knob Creek is a high-decibel declaration of their constitutional right to bear arms, including modern military weapons with a killing potential unimagined by the Second Amendment's 18th-century authors. While only a small percentage of gun owners have high-powered firearms, the community tends to support them, fearful that any legislation passed to outlaw machine guns might eventually be used against hand guns and hunting rifles. Gun control is another divisive issue in a