Guns and Ammo - The Chinese Military's Get Rich Quick Scheme

Well, maybe not really, but they’re making a killing! (*cough* no pun intended) We went to the China International Shooting Range (or whatever it’s called) up in Nankou - a suburb of Beijing on the way North to Badaling Great Wall. It’s about a 45 minute drive with optimal driving conditions.  From what I have been told, it is inside a military installation that apparently used to be (or still is) a munitions storage facility?  Rumor has it they started this range as a side business.  These are just rumors so don’t yell at me if I’m wrong. The last time I went there was with the Dutch guy back in 2002. Its pretty much the same (no real changes), except we were able to take photos (most of the time).

The way it works is you select the gun and you buy ammo by magazine. Each bullet costs between 8 and 12 RMB (from what I can remember) Unfortunately they still don’t allow us to try the “big guns” (grenade launchers, anti-aircraft guns, etc.) as I am told they did in the late 90’s… I ended up spending a tad more than I wanted (RMB 1060) on 5 guns, so not a cheap activity. Plus I wound up with a sore sholder. I did try clay pigeon shooting for the first time - I liked it a lot! I’ll be sure to go back in the coming weeks. The shotgun shells are 8 RMB a piece, so not too horribly priced… BTW, if you want to know where the place is, I geo-coded the photos in yahoo. Remember - guns don’t kill people, people kill people.