It’s a mean, dirty little gun, the K50: the Soviet version of Al Capone’s notorious equaliser of choice — the Tommy gun. It should really have been decommissioned years ago. Instead it is set on full automatic, spitting sparks, chattering like a banshee and gripped hard in both my hands.
Firing from the hip in Prohibition-era style, I watch, fascinated, as flying shell-casings ker-ching off the brick walls of the brick shooting alley. About 20 metres in front of me, bullets rip satisfyingly through a paper target pinned to an already very shot-up wall of sandbags — and stop only when a round jams in the drum-shaped magazine.
Designed by the Russians to deter the Wehrmacht, this particular sub-machinegun is one of the most venerable models on the menu here at what is a uniquely Cambodian tourist attraction. As one bullet-happy tourist notes, “My lasting memory of Phnom Penh is that it’s the only place on the planet where you can get a beer and a machinegun at the same time.”
The frosty Anchor beer is, indeed, readily available — but not advertised on the laminated “menu” presented to visitors at the Cambodian Special Forces base 20 minutes’ drive from downtown Phnom Penh. Instead, the menu is used exclusively to detail the comprehensive array of guns for hire.
The AK47 is much, much easier to handle. Compared with the Tommy gun there’s barely any recoil at all. Even from 50 metres away, the full length of the range, it’s far more accurate, too. Also hung up on the bamboo display wall are Uzis, M16s, and 12-gauge, semi-automatic combat shotguns — the type christened “trench clearers” by US troops during the war in Vietnam. Its report is so astoundingly loud that every other shooter on the range stops and turns. The target is decimated with one cartridge, and the next four serve simply to churn up the mangled sandbags behind it even more. I can already feel the bruises flowering on my shoulders — the 12-gauge is absolutely terrifying, a wicked, horrible weapon.
Yet this is far from the most destructive item on the menu: visitors also have at their disposal light and heavy machineguns, hand grenades, M79 grenade launchers and the devastating, shoulder-fired B40 rocket-propelled grenades.
Once named the “Thunder Ranch”, the wood, brick and bamboo shooting range is run by Cambodia’s 911 Paratrooper Commandos and allows Rambo fantasies to be played out daily by young backpackers and middle-aged upmarket tourists — at fixed, per-bullet price.
Thirty rounds for an AK47 or M16 cost $30 (£17). One hundred for a US-made M60 light machine gun and the similar Russian-made K57 LMG costs $100 (£57). Then prices jump for an M79 launched grenade, which cost $100 per shell. However, you certainly get more bang for your bucks — an M79 can knock down a small building. A B40 rocket propelled grenade costs $200.
Presenting the “menu”, a helpful staff member explains that if a visitor wants to fire the grenade and rocket launchers, it means a trip to another shooting range about 40 minutes’ drive away. To enhance the experience, he adds, old cars can be procured for target practice.
Furthermore (although this particularly unsavoury offer was supposed to have ended years ago) live animal targets are also available — at a price. “We can do it, we can do it,” he smiles. Of the 30 or 40 visitors to the range each day, at least three groups each week opt for the heavy weapons, he says, although he won’t divulge just how many groups use live animals for their rocket practice.
In 2001, Cambodia’s then King, Norodom Sihanouk, made a public appeal for the slaughter of animals to end on the nation’s shooting ranges, noting that such practices were not only tarnishing the country’s reputation but were also diametrically opposed to the philosophy of the national religion, Buddhism. The King stepped in after it became common knowledge that staff at the shooting ranges had at times spiced up the experience by allowing particularly sick tourists to shoot chickens with assault rifles, reportedly for $5 a bird — and to fire rockets at goats and water buffaloes — reported to cost between $100 to $300 (£170).
It is not just livestock that has perished at this range. In 2004, a 25-year-old American tourist turned up like any other visitor, chose a K54 handgun and 80 bullets. He fired 79 at the target. With the last bullet in the chamber he committed suicide.
Although the Lonely Planet guide to Cambodia firmly discourages people from visiting the shooting range — and explains that this once war-torn country is trying desperately to reduce its own weapons stockpiles — trying out military hardware is still irresistible for many backpackers.
A staple day-tour available in the capital now includes a trip to the Khmer Rouge-era prison and torture centre, S-21, where some 17,000 people were detained before being sent for execution at the mouth of mass graves at the Choeung Ek “killing fields” on the outskirts of the capital. After visiting the open pits, tourists are taken to finish off the day with a bracing session of shoot-’em-up action at the 911 base range, just a few kilometres away from the killing fields.
Last week Daniel Deutsch, 22, from Sydney, and three friends were doing just this — and they readily volunteered that ending the day at the range was a rather odd way of capping off their tour of Cambodia’s genocide memorials.
After firing his first M16 rounds, Deutsch turned to suggest that the gunplay was lifting his mood after the deathly intensity of the killing fields. “You don’t want to go back to the hostel all tense,” he said. “We heard we could shoot a chicken. But that would be pretty full-on.”
Charmaine Patel, a diminutive 24-year-old London recruitment worker, needed considerable coaxing from her friends before she decided to try out an AK47. Then she stood on an ammunition box, took hold of the assault rifle set on a bi-pod and let loose.
Alternating between single shots and short bursts, she emptied the 30-bullet magazine in no time. “It’s a real adrenalin rush,” she confessed, out of breath, happy that she had hit the target. It was, however, the last time she planned to shoot a firearm. “It is fun — but in a messed-up way.”
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