DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. - Next summer's vacation season, if you visit Daytona Beach, you can stop by a gun range that's connected to a "booze-filled restaurant," do some target practice with your .44 magnum, get a bite to eat, and then you can do some shopping. What's really neat is that this will be a 'one stop' experience! - so reports HuffPost Weird News.
An indoor, 12-lane, gun range will be in the same locale as a restaurant and retail store. It's slated to open in a building that has been vacant for two years on the city's west side near Interstate 95. This unique eatery and gun range can be a destination location of NRA conferences and meetings. Politicians who take money for campaign donations from the NRA can hold get-togethers here where all are in unison that it's wonderful the modern-day USA has goteen so insanely guns-gone-wild that it's a lot like living in the Wild West. After a hearty meal, shoot 'em up at the gun range, then stop by the store and buy a trinket for wifey - some ruby or sapphire earrings fitted to be in the shape of six-shooters, maybe?
It all sounds so "family friendly." [That is, if your family's roots date back to desperados-of-old like Bob Younger, Bat Masterson, or Lilly Langtry.]
Dining, drinking, dancing, and dying never sounded so good! Or in the words of gun-crazed outlaw Black Jack Ketchum, just before he was hanged in Clayton, N.M., on April 24, 1901: "Can't you hurry this up a bit? I hear they eat dinner in Hades at twelve sharp and I don't aim to be late."
Some of the Wild West's characters had quotes that are just as witty and funny as the best violent hip-hop or outlaw country lyrics ever barked or crooned. "Carpenter, you have spilled the whiskey!" so said Mike Fink, after he killed a friend named Carpenter while attempting to shoot a tin cup of whiskey off the man's head. So ten-gallon hat clever & cool, huh?
The local politicos - called 'Commissioners' in Daytona Beach - had to pass a measure to allow for the new business to open. According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, these Commissioners had a hard time deciding whether or not to allow for such an establishment in the city:
"I've gone back and forth on this," said Commissioner Pam Woods, who later cast a yes vote.
"I was leery," echoed Commissioner Patrick Henry, who also supported the business.
Commissioner Ruth Trager wasn't won over by the new business' developers at the meeting who explained the precautions they'll take, and she cast the lone no vote. She drilled the business partners with questions about how they'll know if someone is sober or a felon.
Commissioner Trager's line of reasoning is as to-the-point as a Glock 9 millimeter. Is there any way you can tell whether a guy just got released from a mental hospital? And with so many people receiving Social Security Disability for mental health reasons (wise guys call these payments from Uncle Sam "crazy checks"), how would you stop a full-blown paranoid schizophrenic from drinking up a half month's SSD, then going bang! bang! bang! shoot-em-up crazy after renting a gun? He's not a gunslinger, even though he thinks he is; and actually, he's just a garden-variety nutcase who's watched Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) more than 200 times, has gone off his Seroquel and Depakote, and after leaving the bar portion of the restaurant, feels ten feet tall and bulletproof. Even while in balance and flying straight, this guy acts a lot more Mike from Swingers than John Dillinger or Henry Starr.
Let's hope this kind of Wild West drinking game doesn't begin its process from the gun range into the bar side of the restaurant. Some things just don't mix too well. Like gasoline and fire. Or TNT and fire. Or bleach and antifreeze and human kidneys. The same can be said, too, of alcohol and firearms. Statistics show there are a quarter of a zillion people serving life sentences in state prisons, right now, who have no idea of what they did to get such life-whisking consequences. They were all black-out drinkers armed with guns - and half of them didn't know the victims they riddled & ridded with lead, either.
The Daytona Beach Commissioners approved the measure by a 2-1 vote Wednesday, Aug. 19. The 12-lane gun range will be located near the intersection of International Speedway Boulevard and Tomoka Farms Road in Daytona Beach. It will operate out of a large building that has been the home of a motorcycle shop and a business called Lucky's, which had a bowling alley, arcade games, a restaurant and bar. Lucky's closed two years ago after being open for only one year.
Trigger-happy entrepreneurs Ron Perkinson and Edward Staudt of Port Orange, Fla., said they'll turn the property at 2900 Bellevue Ave. into an upscale restaurant that serves alcoholic drinks and Perkinson stressed that he and his partner are opening a restaurant and not a bar. But he said he needs alcohol sales to make the restaurant profitable, The Daytona Beach News-Journal reports.
At this establishment, it won't be BYOB - Bring Your Own Booze, but BYOG might apply - or, Bring Your Own Gun. Customers could bring their own guns or rent one on site, Perkinson and Staudt told The Daytona Beach News-Journal. If a restaurant customer orders an alcoholic beverage, his or her driver's license will be scanned by staff along with the licenses of everyone else at their table.
So much for having all documentation and credentials in order just in case the police need to be contacted. And all the way to the squad car, Calamity Carla will be snapping and snarling these words, attributed to Calamity Jane shortly before her death in Deadwood, S.D., in 1903: "Leave me alone and let me go to hell by my own route."
"No reason to get all huffy and puffy. I just told you the death sentence may be imposed for your little stunt in the bar. And why you shot and killed your husband and the woman he was dancing with in that little area between those dozen shooting ranges and the restaurant," says Police Officer Dudley Alwaysdoesright, right after dipping down Calamity Carla's head so she doesn't bump it badly while being ushered into the back of the idling police cruiser.
Anyhow, if you ever go to Daytona Beach and some strange ranger asks you to put a glass of whiskey on your head in the 'Wild West' side of the city, leave. Run like hell! He might have been thrown out of the gun range for being too drunk and acting too violently; and as you've just made his acquaintance, he may be looking for someone for his cruel game of 'target practice'.
