Great Idea: Celebrate Your Divorce With a Machine Gun

Divorce can be a painful experience. You know what else is painful? Being on the receiving end of hundreds of bullets. Why not take that truism and violently redirect it toward symbols of your crumbled marriage? Call it a “celebration” and the idea is at least 3% less disturbing.

Machine Guns Vegas is a 10,000 square foot “luxurious” shooting range; according to their website, they are “not your papa’s shooting range.” (Unless your papa’s shooting range offered military-grade weapons surrounded by “Las Vegas Gun Girls,” which is exactly what you think.) As is fitting for any Vegas business, MGV offers all sorts of package deals, from bachelor/bachelorette parties to the “Seal Team 6” experience. These packages are about having fun, if firing off rounds is something you consider fun.

And then there’s their latest offering, the “Just Divorced” experience, which is ostensibly about “having fun,” albeit through some fucked up catharsis. In this package, freshly divorced individuals (and their besties) can direct their guns and their rage at personal objects representing their disintegrated marriage; MGV sells this as a “new beginning.”

The “Just Divorced” package is the first of it’s [sic] kind in Las Vegas. This package encourages ex-spouses to celebrate their recent uncoupling and new beginning by taking aim at wedding items from years past including (but not limited to) wedding dresses, tuxes, and marriage certificates with the largest caliber-shot available. Up to four guests can celebrate the divorcee’s new independence by utilizing wedding memorabilia as targets in Machine Guns Vegas private VIP room!

Oh man, a VIP room!

For a mere $499, not-at-all emotionally unstable customers get free transportation from the Strip to their own private shooting lanes at MGV, 40 rounds of ammo for a M1919 machine gun (which fires 400-600 rounds per minute, just strong enough to destroy those sturdy letterpress invites), 10 rounds on an MP5 assault rifle (or, if you prefer, a pink M4—hey ladies!), and a VIP lounge where you can happily celebrate your violent new beginning with “cake, snacks and nonalcoholic beverages.” That’s right: No drinking. You’ll just have to save the pomegranate raspberry wine coolers for the ride home.

If someone feels that the best possible way to fete her or his newly single status is with a belt-fed machine gun aimed towards wedding and marriage mementos, it’s safe to assume that this person is very angry (and maybe a firearms enthusiast, too, but angry nonetheless). And if we’ve learned anything from gun violence in our great nation, it’s that the best way to handle anger is definitely pointing a firearm at the source of your discontent—not that MGL’s “Just Divorced” shoot would advocate murder, or even harmless flesh wounds.

So what about the next best thing: firing off rounds at pictures and cardboard cutouts of exes? Doug Elfman at the Las Vegas Review-Journal emailed a company representative to ask just that. She responded, “I think it’s probably best to stick with keeping the targets as ‘things’ and not ‘people.’ :)”

Genghis Cohen (his real name) (really), the owner of Machine Guns Vegas, clarifies: “They’re not allowed to shoot a picture. They can do it privately, but if a nut job shoots a husband or wife in the light of day, we don’t want to be involved in a lawsuit.”