West Point, Ky., hosted 12,000 visitors for the weekend-long Knob Creek Gun Range Machine Gun Shoot (with a separate competition for flame throwers). The featured attraction was "The Line," where a limit of 60 people (the waiting list is 10 years long) get to fire their machine guns into a field of abandoned cars and boats, and during which a shooter might run through $10,000 worth of ammunition. Among the shoot's champions was Samantha Sawyer, 16, the top women's submachine gunner for the last four years. One man told the Louisville Courier-Journal that he met his wife at a previous shoot, knowing that "if she could accept flame-throwing as a hobby, she could accept anything." Said another: "This is one of those times when you know this (the United States) is the greatest place on Earth." [Courier-Journal, October 19]
