It was great on traffic. I would burn through 500,000 bullets just getting to work. I buzz-sawed minivans in half and shredded the exteriors of buses and semis. Anyone who got in my way was in mortal danger.
Or so I liked to pretend. The button was just a plastic battery-operated noisemaker glued to the dash. Pressing it allowed me to vent my rage at people ahead of me whose ears were obviously too close together.
There were also switches for a grenade launcher and a death ray. I preferred the machine gun because it sounded bad. The grenade launcher was too slow and the death ray made a noise like a food processor.
I installed the machine gun because cursing bothered my wife. Stuck behind some octogenarian poking along in the fast lane, I could keep the commentary to myself and instead imagine the expression on his face as his bone coaster came apart around him.
My kids begged to be my gunner. They had no restraint, though. Even cars traveling in the opposite direction were soon worth a burst. Easily bored, Autumn eventually started picking off bicyclists and pedestrians.
The wife disarmed us. Tired of imaginary bloodletting that accompanied even the short drive to church, one day she reached over and ripped the switch from the dash.
On Saturday, I got a chance to shoot machine guns for real. The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office held a class on the history of organized crime in America. As part of the draw, attendees got to shoot real machine guns afterward.
We fired the preferred machine guns of America's gangsters, including the highly popular Roaring '20s Thompson submachine gun, and even Bonnie & Clyde's personal favorite: the Browning automatic rifle (BAR).
The BAR is a man's weapon. It weighs 20 pounds and is nearly impossible to hide from. The bullets go through buildings, cars and telephone poles. It would make a nice traffic gun.
Oddly, the women on Saturday seemed just as interested in trying out the big dog of gangster guns. It was like watching kindergartners work a jackhammer.
The enthusiasm women had for machine guns has changed my mind about having a real one installed. Commuting effectively through firepower only works if I'm the only one doing it.
Given America's attraction to self-important gizmos, it wouldn't be long before everyone simply couldn't live without a machine gun in their ride. For a society that still can't drive and talk on the phone at the same time, that would be bad.
rkirby@sltrib.com
