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Lock & Load: Machine Gun Experience Set to Open in Wynwood

Miami, are you ready to get your Tony Montana game face on? Or perhaps you're feeling like James Cagney in The Public Enemy. Whichever fictional gangster you prefer, Lock & Load: Machine Gun Experience has the arsenal to satisfy your firearm fetish. Amid the art galleries of Wynwood, a 14,000-square-foot warehouse has been transformed into an armory stocked with fully automatic AK-47s, M4s, Uzis, and Tommy guns, to name a few, where for a few hundred bucks, customers can unleash some serious firepower.

See also: Assault Rifles Are Big Business in Florida as Federal Ban Looms

Lock & Load is essentially a gun lover's version of a kiddie arcade. Scheduled to open at the end of the month, the place is billing itself as a "high-end" shooting range where customers can fire 25 types of fully automatic guns -- the kind of weapons that require a six-month FBI background check to own.

The thought of a warehouse stocked with serious weaponry in the middle of art-centric Wynwood, a neighborhood still plagued by gun crimes, should raise eyebrows, but Lock & Load's business model is perfect for South Florida, a region teeming with people who love shooting fancy firearms.

In addition to annual memberships, Lock & Load -- located at 2545 N. Miami Ave. -- offers an array of packages to fulfill every shooter's fantasy, such as the "Scarface" package so you can bark "Say hello to my little friend!" while firing a Sig Sauer 1911, an IMI Uzi, a Colt M4 Commando rifle, and a Thompson submachine gun. Other packages include the "Black Widow," the "007," the "Special Forces Israel," and "Automatic Gratification," which buys you 250 rounds of ammo and use of ten firearms for $575.

Now that's killer.

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Francisco Alvarado was born in Nicaragua and grew up in Miami, giving him unique insight into the Magic City and all its dark corners. An investigative reporter with a knack for uncovering corruption, Alvarado made his bones as a staff writer at Miami New Times and remains in dogged pursuit of the next juicy story.

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