A Guided Tour of the Big Guns at the Big Sandy Shoot

The October 2018 Big Sandy Shoot saw the largest turn out of big guns on record. Robert Bigando, AKA "Dangerous Bob" gave us a tour of the nearly two dozen big guns on display at the event.

The Big Sandy Shoot is a biannual event that takes place near Wikieup, Arizona, in April and October of each year. The event attracts hundreds of shooters, machine guns and large caliber guns. The most recent shoot was held from October 20 to 22, 2017. It saw the largest turn out of big guns in the event's 30 year history. This included the largest civilian owned gun - the 152mm Russian D20 howitzer.

These guns are owned by big gun enthusiasts such as Bigando. He bought his first 20mm when he was only 20 years old. In fact, he had to wait until he was 21 to be able transfer it to himself. It didn't take long for him to go from the 20mm, to a 25mm, to a 57mm, to a 90mm and so on. Bigando is now a sought after expert in the domain. He had three guns at Big Sandy, and worked on many of the others.

According to Bigando, owning a big gun is very similar to owning a machine gun in terms of both paperwork and cost. "A good Bofors gun can probably be picked up for $25,000." he said. "So you got to ask yourself, what would you rather have? An M-16, or a 37mm Bofors?"

Which gun would you rather have?

Video by Ben Philippi.