I have discovered the Ask An American subreddit and it is a gold mine*

Jason Lefkowitz

@Taweret It's charming that they think they have to go to a shooting range to do that, rather than just knocking on the door of any random house

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@Taweret The Royal Hawaiian Shooting Club - of which I was a member for a year - used to substantially fund itself by advertising this experience _specifically to Japanese tourists_, with the entire event held entirely in Japanese, and with these hilariously overbuilt guns with little .22 actions inside them. xD

Seeing their poster and saying, "I have _got_ to do this" and actually doing so is how I joined the club. I still have my membership pin. xD

(Sadly, they're gone - combination of COVID and rising rents. )

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@Taweret OH I forgot the funniest part

so the guns are actual guns (even if they're silly .22s beefed up to look like Big American movie guns) but even with that AND the safety lesson they'd four-corner tie them to the stalls. You had plenty of freedom to aim - really, it made it harder to aim well because of those stupid cables - but it was impossible to, you know, point the gun anywhere but downrange.

anyway it was hilarious and I'm sad it's gone xD

unlofl [Promoted Toot]

@moira @Taweret Was it really all .22s, all those big revolvers and ARs and SMGs I see out there in .22??

It seems so weirdly touristy, a 9mm carbine should be high up there on the "newbie plinkers" list.

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@unlofl @Taweret Everything I saw was a .22. Of course, that was for the Japanese tourist experience.

If you were a member that was obviously not the case, it was a regular shooting range and club for you.

But the tourist experience! Yeah they had fakes of all kinds of guns in .22 gauge. ^_^

Jason Lefkowitz

@moira @unlofl @Taweret They're definitely out there. I have some experience with this one, a big tacticool-looking AR-15 that is really just an elaborate plastic shell wrapped around Mossberg's .22 caliber "Plinkster."

(As a bonus, you can't clean the gun itself without first entirely taking apart the plastic shell, which is an enormous pain in the ass.)

https://www.mossberg.com/firearms/rifles/715t.html

unlofl [Promoted Toot]

@jalefkowit @moira @Taweret but but but... aren't there just conversion kits for that, so it's still a normal rifle you can clean?!

P.s. I kinda want an MP5 in .22, for absolutely no good reason whatsoever

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@unlofl @jalefkowit @Taweret I don’t think you understand how much these are Japanese tourists

remember, _individual rounds_ are licensed in Japan

_individual rounds_.

which made the subgroup of little old japanese ladies firing giant macho guns all the more adorable of course but… I’m honestly glad they only had .22s to deal with xD

to the range’s credit they were all very clean and the sights were well calibrated - since there’s no recoil worth mentioning, if you aimed decently, you would hit the target, and they did, and everyone had a good time ^_^

unlofl [Promoted Toot]

@moira @jalefkowit @Taweret I have a sig p322 and love it for this reason, feels like cheating, just "pew!pew!pew!" from 0.3 football fields and they all hit.

But licensing individual rounds... I guess I've heard of that, but god damn... assuming you have all the stuff legally, what do you do after shooting at the range? Sign some kind of attestation? "I discharged 53 rounds and am now in possession of 47 rounds"

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@unlofl @jalefkowit @Taweret I suppose I should say “registered” since it’s technically slightly different and _if_ you’re able to get permission to do that then - yes. That is what you do.

Trying to remember the details but their customs people went after one of their own olympic shooting team members when she came back from some competition with like the wrong number of rounds.

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@unlofl @jalefkowit @Taweret And gods forbid you find an old sword somewhere. The police take that shit _very seriously_ and you basically are automatically a suspect.

unlofl [Promoted Toot]

@moira @jalefkowit @Taweret what?! Are there no machetes or any random large blades around?

US knife laws are dumb when you dig into it, but at least the courts don't take them very seriously without an actual alleged crime. You know, we just use them to manufacture parole violations to fuck certain people.

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@unlofl @jalefkowit @Taweret There are but they're classified differently. It's about old Samurai class stuff as much (or more) as the utility as a weapon.

I knew they took it real seriously but I didn't have any kind of personal experience with it. Then I saw a video from another westerner in Japan where they discovered - buried and in bad condition - an old sword at their house's construction site. (1/2)

Solarbird :flag_cascadia:

@unlofl @jalefkowit @Taweret And the crew just _stopped_ and backed the fuck out of there. She was like "can't we just take it to the police?" and they were like "no! no no no! do NOT touch it. they have to come here and take it."

the police showed up and ended up questioning everybody for a while, including her, until they were satisfied it was an actual accidental find. Then they checked to see whether it had historical value, decided not, and had it destroyed. (I don't know how that part works at all.)

Anyway yeah that's what it's like in general as far as I can tell (having no personal experience) when a sword or gun _or round_ is involved. (2/2)

unlofl [Promoted Toot]

@moira @jalefkowit @Taweret meanwhile, the last time I was in an American airport, it was plastered with signs about "please for the love of fuck do not bring a gun on the plane by accident were begging you! Please double check you didn't forget about a random gun you left in your bag we know those things are just all over the place!"

Jason Lefkowitz

@unlofl @moira @Taweret I still remember the ad I saw ten years ago for a handy plastic box to let you keep a pistol in the shower.

https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2014/03/the-madness-of-gun-culture/