BrokenPaw
Member
So I was sitting on my deck on Wednesday afternoon, winding down from a long day at the office, when I heard a noise from through the woods: BapBapBapBapBap. "Huh," thinks me, "that sounded an awful lot like somebody shooting full-auto."[0] My wife heard it, too, and asked if it was what she thought it was. I told her, "Probably," and went back to my drink. We don't often hear gunfire from our deck, but it's not so infrequent as to be alarming. Shooting an automatic in my area is probably a bit injudicious, but there are farms nearby, and it's none of my concern if people are out having some fun.
A minute or two later, I heard another 5-or-6 round burst, and then another. They sounded like they were coming from about a quarter mile away. My mother-in-law and brother-in-law (who are staying with us) hear these bursts, and MIL started to get really nervous. She wanted to know if those were "Machine Guns". I told her that, yes, probably, someone was shooting a fully-automatic weapon nearby somewhere, and not to worry about it, because it's not illegal or anything (what with VA being a Class-III state). She was totally surprised that such a thing could possibly be legal, but since I wasn't freaking out, she didn't freak out either.
Couple minutes more, and I heard another burst, and then I heard an adult male voice screaming, like he was under extreme stress. All of this was too far away for me to see anything, across a ravine and a creek and a hundred yards of heavy woods. Because of the screaming, I decided to call the local constabulary. The screaming told me that either something illegal was up, or something legal had gone seriously awry, and they'd need EMTs at the least.
I got hold of the police dispatcher, and she told me that she already had units investigating. I thanked her, and hung up, and made sure that my AR was ready to hand, just in case whatever was happening relocated to my yard.
I looked on various news websites yesterday, and in the Prince William police blotter, but I didn't see anything about it. I'm all curious as to what went down. Any other Manassassians[1] know anything?
-BP
[0] I know that it's entirely possible to shoot a semi-auto at full-auto rates, but this burst was too...regular. Too precisely-timed to be a yahoo with a fast trigger finger. I suppose it could have been bump-fire, now that I think about it. ::shrug::
[1] Speaking of Manassassians, fess up: which one of us drives a white Geo Tracker with a "Molon Labe" bumper sticker on the spare-tire cover? I was behind you on Route 28 on Wednesday afternoon...
A minute or two later, I heard another 5-or-6 round burst, and then another. They sounded like they were coming from about a quarter mile away. My mother-in-law and brother-in-law (who are staying with us) hear these bursts, and MIL started to get really nervous. She wanted to know if those were "Machine Guns". I told her that, yes, probably, someone was shooting a fully-automatic weapon nearby somewhere, and not to worry about it, because it's not illegal or anything (what with VA being a Class-III state). She was totally surprised that such a thing could possibly be legal, but since I wasn't freaking out, she didn't freak out either.
Couple minutes more, and I heard another burst, and then I heard an adult male voice screaming, like he was under extreme stress. All of this was too far away for me to see anything, across a ravine and a creek and a hundred yards of heavy woods. Because of the screaming, I decided to call the local constabulary. The screaming told me that either something illegal was up, or something legal had gone seriously awry, and they'd need EMTs at the least.
I got hold of the police dispatcher, and she told me that she already had units investigating. I thanked her, and hung up, and made sure that my AR was ready to hand, just in case whatever was happening relocated to my yard.
I looked on various news websites yesterday, and in the Prince William police blotter, but I didn't see anything about it. I'm all curious as to what went down. Any other Manassassians[1] know anything?
-BP
[0] I know that it's entirely possible to shoot a semi-auto at full-auto rates, but this burst was too...regular. Too precisely-timed to be a yahoo with a fast trigger finger. I suppose it could have been bump-fire, now that I think about it. ::shrug::
[1] Speaking of Manassassians, fess up: which one of us drives a white Geo Tracker with a "Molon Labe" bumper sticker on the spare-tire cover? I was behind you on Route 28 on Wednesday afternoon...
