Anyone know of accidental deaths at ranges?

T

TMoney

New member
Nutty friend of mine just asked me this question, so I pose it to you guys.
It doesn't seem likely, but I'm sure with all the horror stories we do have, there is a possibility.
 
One I've heard most often happened in California a couple of years ago. Guy purchased an SKS, and it went full auto. It startled him, and he dropped it, and one of the rounds caught him.


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Beware the man with the S&W .357 Mag.
Chances are he knows how to use it.
 
Back about 15 years ago. Kid was going to his hunters saftey class. Had a tube fed .22 like a Marlin. Kid sat in a back of a truck working the action. When they got to the range he jumps out. Walking with the rifle he slips on a patch of ice. striking the butt of the gun on the ground. It Discharged and killed him. "They" say the gun had been sitting in the closet for years and this was the first time it had been out.
 
I don't have the details, but there was an accident a few years ago at a pistol range in Dallas. A young man working in the air-gun building was hit by a shot from the outdoor range that was fired over the deflector baffles.

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ChasW
 
The incident CWAdams talked about was on one of those disaster problems on Discovery or TLC where the company, Failures, Inc., investigates how the death occurred. That incident was the result of a race gun double shooting (or so it is thought) such that the racer never knew about the second shot. The racer was ahead of the shooting line, as was part of the drill, but that put him in a position to defeat the baffles, which were faulty as well. The bullet took a bizarre and curved course, but struck a boy, who was seated in the indoor range, in the head where he slumped.

Another man was killed in Dallas area earlier this year while supposedly loading up his gear after shooting. He was shot in the body by a gun in his gear bag. He later died of his wounds.
 
I know the people involved in the Dallas incident personally. It was an AD during an IPSC match. The boy was watching an airgun match in a nearby building. It was a freak accident that the bullet even hit the boy. This never would have happened if some idiot didn't schedule the airgun match at the same time as the IPSC match.

Had a friend working at a gun shop in Dallas tell me that a few years ago some guy came in, rented a gun, and commited suicide by blowing his brains out at the shooting stall.

I'm surprised accidental deaths and woundings don't occur more often at public ranges with the idiots I see. These people don't have a clue they just swept you with the muzzle of their gun. When you tell them so they just have a blank look on their face.
 
Some shotgun shooter laid his soft case over the roof of the car at the local range here some years back (before I got here). What with one thing and another he succeeded in blowing his wife's head off on the other side of the car. I have various accounts of it, including from witnesses and LEOs which all agree. Unfortunately not much was learned. I, too, am surprised that there isn't more of it.

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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Another man was killed in Dallas area earlier this year while supposedly loading up his gear after shooting. He was shot in the body by a gun in his gear bag. He later died of his wounds.[/quote]

Yep. He was loading up his loaded pistol in a soft case after his range session at the Garland Public Shooting Range and gut-shot himself. I think it took him 6 or 8 hours to die.

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¡Viva la RKBA!
Bulldawg: NRA, GOA, TSRA, Shiner Bock Connoisseur.
Bulldawg's Firearms Page
 
Had a guy at TargetMasters in Milpitas, CA come in alone and rent a pistol at their indoor range. Couple of minutes later he commited suicide with the rental gun. Now the rules are no single rental shooters unless you are known by the staff.

One more...

A few years back there was an accidental shooting at Traders in San Leandro, CA. This is a large, well established gun store with a full time gunsmith. Test firing was routinely conducted on the premises by the gunsmith, indoors in the back of the shop in a seperate room. The firing backstop had seen thousands of rounds and years of use.

One day, one round being test fired by the gunsmith broke through the backstop and the wall seperating the gunsmith's quarters from the retail store. Sadly, this one round struck and killed a customer.



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Just one of the Good Guys
 
My brother and I were in a local shooting range not two months ago when a man and his family came in looking for guns (the family comes out fine, just so you know) and the father decided to try out a Desert Eagle. This was the first time I'd seen one of these in action and I was dutifully impressed with the sound and the muzzle blast. The man shooting it was a pretty big guy and he was rocked back by it. Anyway, as my brother and I were leaving, I heard the guy who had tried the gun out say that it was, in effect, too much for him and that he'd left thirteen shots for the guys at the range to play with. Well, apparently one of them did. The details of what happened were never clear and I didn't feel as though it were my place to ask, but from what we understand after one of the employees shot the first round, he lost control of the pistol (perhaps it flew out of his hand and maybe there was an attempt to catch it) and the gun fired a second shot into his head. The range was closed for a few weeks after and we took the staff a bottle of Jack Daniels, but the whole thing was a little frightening since we'd considered taking the Desert Eagle for a spin ourselves.
 
I heard about that shooting and Desert Eagle, I believe it was .50AE not sure though, well definitely big bore...whenever I take a beginner shooting and they are unsure about how they would handle the recoil, I stick only one bullet in the magazine or cylinder so in case they drop it or whatever they can't shoot themselves because its empty.

I also read about an incident at the Las Vegas Class 3 range, where some guy was unholstering his Sig and shot himself in the leg. In the end the was ok, the bullet travelled through his upper thigh to the medial aspect of his leg and no artery or nerve was damaged. Very lucky man.

-bamf
 
There was another shooting at TargetMasters in Milpitas CA about two or three years ago where a shooter came in and possibly rented a gun, was shooting for a couple of hours, would shoot about 50 rds put the gun down, buy more ammo wander around, shoot etc. Finally the manager got nervous when he was in the bay shoot a couple of rounds, look over his shoulder, shoot a couple see who was in the store and so on. Manager goes into the bay and asks the shooter to leave. The two of them got into a struggle over the gun and the manager gets knocked to the ground just as an ex employee runs into the bay and pops the BG twice in the back. About the time the second round is impacting the BG puts his gun to his head and pulls the trigger. Police respond and find the ex employee is illegally carrying a firearm. but he is aquitted of the shooting because it is determined that neither of his shots would have been fatal. BG was killed by his own shot.
 
I heard a report on the radio, mentioning a second suicide at BullsEye in Marin County. This was in 98, or 99. The two suicides were not related. Hope I've got this right.
 
I don't know of any deaths at ranges.. but was involved in an incident at a range here locally to Atlanta. An irresponsible shooter a few lanes over was shooting a .357 at everything but his target. A round struck the wall, and somehow jumped back up my lane and struck me in the back of the head. (I saw it punch through my target at 25ft and ducked.) Left a nicely placed gash on the back of my head. I even kept the flatened bullet. :( What really pissed me off is that the guy played stupid the whole time and left in a hurry! If that weren't bad enough.. the guys running the range blew the thing off and continue their usual Clinton-bashing.. I suppose since I didn't die or anything.. it was okay.

Needless to say.. I don't visit that range anymore.
 
To all the lurking antis here, you are not allowed to use this thread as an example of why guns are bad.

Shooting ranges are for recreation/practice. Take any other practice-environment, and ask if that activity should have it's tools taken away. The answer will be no.

Accidents happen because of stupid people, not because of stupid tools. So before you tell your friends about all this, think first.


Hueco
 
There was a case involving a police range, the shooter was running thru a combat course with a number of silhouette targets. The range officer had leaned a bunch of targets on the outside of his office. The officer shot the stack and the RO. This is off the top of my head and I can't cite a source but Ayoob had it in one of his articles sometime back.

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Ne Conjuge Nobiscum
"If there be treachery, let there be jehad!"
 
I don't know of any accidental deaths at local ranges, but I know that about once a year, someone at one of the local rental ranges saves the last round for himself.
 
In a case that was stranger than fiction....

A local Iowan hunter was out hunting turkey, and had bagged an impressive catch for the day. Quickly grabbing the carcass, he threw it and his shotguns in the back and rushed home to show his family. As he got out and walked around the side of the car, a single shotgun blast pierced the side of the car and hit him in the leg, leaving him crippled. It turns out that the turkey in his trunk was indeed not dead, and just happened to pull the trigger on his loaded shotgun right at that moment with it's claw as it thrashed about in the car.

Freaky stuff.

The only death I've seen at a firing range was when I was watching an M82A1 Barrett competition. The range didn't have a thick enough barrier at the back end and one of the .50 BMG rounds pierced it and killed a cow on the other side. Needless to say we had steak for supper, lol

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I twist the facts until they tell the truth. -Some intellectual sadist

The Bill of Rights is a document of brilliance, a document of wisdom, and it is the ultimate law, spoken or not, for the very concept of a society that holds liberty above the desire for ever greater power. -Me
 
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