Incidents at the range.

About 15 years ago I was at an outdoor range. It was kind of a come as you are, use good sense type of place, but legit. We had shot and cleared the range, or so we thought. This young girl, who was with her Grandfather, began shooting downrange while WE WERE DOWNRANGE TOO.

I looked at her shooting the clay plates that were a few yards to the right of us. No sooner, I felt an incredible pain in my calf. It felt like a several wasps had stung me at the same time. I grabbed my calf in pain. I looked down and blood was pouring from my calf. I was simply in shock. Had I been shot at the pistol range? How ironic would that be?

We get uprange and best I can tell is it was either a ricochet, or part of the clay target hit my calf. It was a graze, but deep enough to bleed pretty good. I wrapped my calf and we leave.

To this day, I think how unbelievably dangerous that incident was. I never went back to that place. Had I been the litigious type I could have made life very difficult for several people.
 
I was the Tower NCOIC at an M203 range(grenade launcher mounted to an M16). Firing TP rounds, thank god... The lane safety is staring off into space, and as I call "Grenadiers, 300 meters front", I notice that this joe has the BARREL of the 203 butted up to the railroad ties, and the muzzle of his M16 resting on top of the tie. He was about to pull the trigger when I SCREAMED cease fire over the loudspeaker. Dude had no idea that he was about to fire a grenade round into that damn railroad tie... and I smoked the living dog crap out of that lane safety.
 
Last Friday, kid comes into the shop

I just purchased a little toy when this twit comes in.
In one hand what every nitwit needs a cell phone stuck against the side of his head. In the other a Glock somthing or other and a box of rounds. The glock is hanging up side down by his pinky through the trigger guard.
You have the picture so far?:(
He walked up to the counter and swept the room with the barrel numerious times, I truly counted the barrel pointed at myself, 3 times.
I nudged the guy behind the counter who is buisy doing the paperwork and said "Would you say somthing to that kid, the magazine is in the gun and I have looked down the barrel several times"
Personaly I wanted to take out my little 45 and show him what its like to have a gun pointed at you but I decided that letting them take care of it would be a better idea.
The kid then swept him and the look that went over the face of the guy behind the counter said I wasnt the only one dursterbed.
He left me and walked over to the kid and asked him to set the gun on the counter "Please" There is a sign on the door "No uncassed or open guns allowed."
The kid couldnt understand why he was upset for bringing in a gun to a gun store (they have a range and he had planed on shooting) but did set it down.
The guy behind the counter said, "You have swept the room several times and pointed it at me twice and your finger is on the trigger, your not being responsible and I am about to ask you to leave".
The next thing out of the kids mouth showed just how stupid he was.
"F--- YOU its unloaded!"
And this is where it got scary, the counter guy picked up the Glock and dropped the mag and it was full! He then racked the slide and thank god nothing in the chamber.
And then the statement of the day came out of the twits mouth,
"I told you it wasnt loaded!"
The guy behind the counter I think did the best thing he could. Picked up the second mag that was on the box of ammow and in seconds pulled the floor plate and dumped all the rounds and handed him the gun the two mags with out the springs and told him to leave and never come back and the look he gave the kid made him turn a little white.
Personaly I think shooting the twit would have been a better idea but cooler heads took care of it.
 
indoor accident

ricochet hit a man that was shooting next to my friend. lucky it just grazed him..
 
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I was at a local indoor range when some meat head came in with a Tommy Gun. He had brought along a woman (I assume his wife), and seemed like he wanted everyone to know he had a Tommy. The next thing I know he is rapid firing (not allowed) so fast that for a second I thought he had an automatic. He obviously didn't have much experience with guns because I don't think he hit the target with half of his shots. Fortunately the guys running the range came in and gave him an earful about the rapid fire. After that the guy only shot a few more rounds and left. Guys like that make other gun enthusiasts look bad. :mad:
 
Why is rapid fire not allowed? My range has no rules against it. Do you mean just emptying the gun as fast as you can? I can see that being against the rules, but not necessarily firing 2 rounds a second.
 
Incidents...

In the past month, there was a range suicide at a local range here in
South Florida.

There is a five day waiting period in my county, but the gun shops will let you come in and try out your new gun before then, you just can't take it home with you.

Woman buys a .32, comes back to the range another day and commited suicide.

I have heard of one other range suicide, back in Philly, a long time ago.

On a lighter note, my local range has a rule against rapid fire shooting.
I have personally noticed one of the employees (possibly the owner) getting rather pissed about it. I also wonder what the concern is (especially since they rent machine guns!)

Is their a greater chance of a jam, KB or other type of malfunction when one is shooting "rapid fire"?

For a semi-auto pistol, just how fast is "rapid fire"?
 
I saw video of a fire at an indoor range. Lots of powder gets downrange. These folks hit the target tree, sparked and ignited the wall, then the floor. Pretty interesting video. Fortunately it never got to the backstop (that ballistic foam rubber stuff.)

When I was a newbie, I walked into an unfamiliar gun store and was asking the clerk a question. I reached into my pocket to show him the part, but couldn't get it out of my pocket. Younger guy at the register gave me a odd look, tensed up, then relaxed as I handed him the part. Wasn't until I was on the way home that it dawned on me what had happened. Fumbling in your pockets is not the best thing to do in an unfamiliar gun shop.
 
^yeah, both the owner and his son, and another employee at my local range carry on the job. You probably made him a little nervous.

Does anyone know why they carry at ranges? Is it just because they enjoy open carry, and theyre excercising their right, or is it more of a protection thing, because of the nature of the business?
 
GLP- From what I've been told, rapid fire is not allowed because people can get out of control and start hitting the ceiling. Seems hard to believe but I guess a couple of idiots along the line have probably ruined it for everyone. I have shot "rapid fire" in the country at a home range many times and never had a problem hitting the target with every shot.
 
That makes sense, though unlikely. But yeah, I guess there a few inexperienced idiots who ruin it for everyone. The only time Ive hit the ceiling (or so I thought I did) was a couple times when I was shooting my Beretta 96, and my finger pressed the trigger directly after an aimed shot, and the gun was still pointed upwards because of the recoil. Kind of scared me a little. I was expecting to shoot, but the shot came too early, and I think I might have put a hole in their ceiling :(

Ah well though. Apparantly im not the first
 
I have also heard that rapid firing can cause "cookoff" where the barrel/chamber of the gun actuall gets hot enough to fire off a chambered round. Although you should always be aware of what you are doing with a chambered round it can still be dangerous if it fires when you are not expecting.
 
When I took the Cooper Extension Course in Houston back in 1982, a Houston PD LEO was over on the extreme right side of the firing line. Since back then they had to carry in a flapped holster he was using his duty rig to become proficient with it and the 1911. We are in the middle of an exercise when I hear, "I'm hit!" I look over and the LEO is going down holding his right calf. Uncle Jeff, ever the instructor, yells for the rest of to stay on target and ignore the wounded man, while he and the range officer took care of the cop. The poor guy got disconnected with the flap and got his finger on the trigger (Rule 2) before he cleared leather and shot himself in the calf. I would not have wanted to 'splain that to my captain!

On the more humerous (and dumber) side....

I once went hunting with my best friend, his father and his two idiot uncles. I was around 16 or 17. The three brothers were famous for pulling gags on each other. At the very least one of their caps was sure to get ventilated this day. One uncle had a 12 ga shell used for scaring off birds, the kind that shoots out a small explosive charge that detonates among the birds and scares them off from airports and the like. He slips it into my friend's father's shotgun. We came to a shallow water-filled ditch, and one brother steps across. Just as he does my friend's dad shoots in the water from about six feet away to splash him. His shotgun goes boom and the little explosive makes a small and unimpressive splash in the water. There it is in the ditch water and the fuze is burning with a sizzling sound. My friend's father goes, "What the s###?!" and leans over to investigate the strange little sizzling device in the ditch with predictable results.

One thing about that group, we learned how not to behave around guns.

CX
 
I was at the local indoor range a couple of months ago, a guy was there with his 2 kids. One was 18-ish, the other 12-ish. I was five or six rows down on the right from the man and the younger son, the older son was in the lane to my right. The older son was doing swimmingly. I stopped to reload and looked to my left to see the youger son skipping(!) towards me with a with a revolver pointed out in front of him!! I duck in between the protective glass and wait til the kid goes by and then go have a little chat with the father. I used a couple of choice words when the man told me to "calm down, it's not loaded." By this time the children have seen me gesturing emphatically at their father and are present. I walk with them down to the older son's lane and I pick up the revolver, open the cylinder and what do you know, 4 rounds inside. Should the child have tripped and fell down and pulled the trigger, the hammer would have fallen on an empty chamber, but that is no excuse. They were asked politely to leave. Stupidity should be painful.

Off topic but still ridiculous. I was waiting for the clerk at a LGS to finish with a customer and I happened to over hear their conversation, not an easy thing as the customer was only fluent in Ebonics. The customer had a CCW and was trying to decide which Glock to purchase. The clerk made a couple of decent suggestions about a holster and the man replied he didn't need one. It was a full-sized Glock so the clerk asked him how he would carry it. The man took it, and stuck it down the front of his pants, and tucked his shirt in behind it so that the grip stuck out in plain sight. The clerk informed him that he could be charged for brandishing and might lose his license if he did so. The man said he wasn't worried about it, it would be worth it because he would look so cool to his friends. He was asked politely to leave.
 
This is my post to a similar thread.

Never told anyone this.

When I was about two months into my eighteenth year, I was out shooting in the back hills around my town, before they started building homes out in the middle of nowhere. I was with a friend and he had brought one of his friends along for the ride. I had about three or four guns with me. I had my 92FS Berretta, my friend had my AR-7 Survival rifle, and reluctantly I loned his friend my dad's old ruger .22 single six. Well we're popping off a few rounds, a were in this kind of backwash with a good soft sandy bottom and a good berm to use as a backdrop. You know just shooting at cans and stuff we find out there.

Suddenly tons of fun gets it in his head that what they show on tv is funny in real life. He takes the single six, holds the trigger down, points it at the ground in front of me and says, "Dance". He then proceeds to empty the revolver rapid hammer style. The only thing that saved me from a ricochete in the crotch or the gut was the sandy wash. He got a good laugh out of it.

Right up to the point where I took my gun from him with my Berretta pointed at his forehead. That day I almost crossed the line into the criminal world. I never went shooting with anyone else other than family after that. And I guess it was partly my fault for lending a firearm to someone I wasn't sure of. Never hung out with either of them after that. But I didn't report it or anything cause I was young and a little naive, but mostly I think staring down the barrell of my Berretta got the point across far clearer than anything else could have. Maybe I was wrong in some of the mistakes I did, but that's how you learn in life, assuming you survive those mistakes.
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Also from a previous thread;

I work at a local hotel and have been here for about a year or so. This may not sound unique but the manager allows me to open carry until around 5a.m. (I work the 11 to 7 grave shift). After 5 I put the gun under the counter.

Anyway i've grown to know the manager quite well and since he said he had never fired a gun before, I figured I would aquaint him with the pleasure of target shooting. He has a son about 9 or 10 so we brought him along with us to the range which is about a 5 minute drive away. The range is actually owned and run by a local wildlife federation which is basically a bunch of old timers, hunters, and the few locals who are passionate about the second amendment. They do their best to maintain the range, but it's all on volunteer work so it's not the best of ranges. There are no RO's except during federation events like trap or IPSC (I think that's the abbreviation). There's nothing really that marks range, just big dirt berms set up in sections for varying callibers and weapon models (handgun, rifle, etc.).

So we get up their and i'm trying my best to instruct this guy and his son but i'm not a professional instructor I only know what i've been taught. Which is quite a bit but i'm not the teacher kind of person so i'm doing my best. Now the guy and his son are Indian (not the native american kind) and I don't know if the kid just didn't understand english all that well or I wasn't speaking clearly enough or what, but no matter what I told his dad, (he had to translate everything to the kid) the kid wouldn't keep his finger off the trigger. Every time he'd grip the gun (Colt 1911A1 circa.1943) he'd wrap his finger around the trigger. Now nothing really bad happened, the kid only wound up firing one round and I proceeded to show his dad the gun, and tell him the basics of firearm safety, and grip safeties, etc. then we left.

Now I know it's not much of a mishap but I felt I had to do all this for them since he does run a hotel, and apparently the previous year a maid found a big revolver (he couldn't discribe it beyond that) and turned it into the manager. The gun apparently had been pushed under the mattress of one of the guest beds and had been forgotten. (That in itself is a mishap cause some moron lost a nice revolver from the sound of it). But what's surprising is the manager called the police about it and the officer that came out said for him to put it somewhere safe in case Mr. Forgetfull notices the missing weight. Apparently he didn't cause a year and a half later I hear about it and the manager says I can keep the gun, he'll just have to go find it. I ask him where he put it after about two days of searching and he said he put it in a big cardboard box full of extra pillows and forgot about it. Now it's missing and i'm out a gun I never had.
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I confess that I changed the barrel on my Dan Wesson M-15 using the older
style wrench with separate barrel plug, then fired the plug down wrench, had
to hacksaw off the barrel shroud and barrel and replace them. A short time afterwards read in one of the gun magazines where one of the "experts" admitted to doing that, then I didn't feel so bad. The newer style Dan Wessonuzzle wrenches are one piece tools, a much better design. And I did
buy a spare barrel for my 9MM Browning HP, when I fired it I wondered why
the cases were expanding so much, yes it was a 40 S&W barrel.
 
I used to belong to a private shooting range where every member had their own key and could go anytime 24/7. It was kind of a hole in the wall but it served the purpose. It had eight 50' shooting stations, nicely lite, clean, restrooms and soft drink machines.

One day I got there just as someone was leaving which was unusual because I had never been there before when someone else was using the range. I had been there dozens of times and I always had the place to myself. I was there about 15 minutes when this old man comes in looking crabby as all get out. He starts bitchin' at me, "why the hell don't you have the fan turned on" he hollers at me. "What"? I said. "Turn the God*anm fan on" he screamed at me. I told him I had just got there and to turn it on himself. The guy before me must have forgotten to turn the fan on when he turned the lights on. Great way to start the day.

Anyway, we start shooting and I take a break to get a coke and when I return he's down range. So I take off my ear muffs and toss them on the bench. Well the old man sees that and goes nuts. He screams "get behind the line. You know the rules! You're not supposed to touch that bench when someone is down range." I said, "all I did was toss my ear muffs on the friggin' bench" Well, this old man was gonna have a heart attack so I just said sorry about that and walked away.

So a little while later I said I was going down range to check my targets and he says OK. I get down range and turn around and the old man is standing at his bench loading his gun! I screamed at him "what the fu*k are you doing" and ran back up range to my shooting bench. I asked him, "are you nuts, I'm down range and you're loading your gun. Don't you know the rules?" He says "I'm a retired policeman". I said "you're a stupid old man!" I went into the office and called the president of the gun club and told him exactly what happened and never went back to that range again.
 
skeet range G's

one Sunday at the skket/trap range, the sound of 15,000,000 watts of base brought all shooting to a stop. The next thing we know we have three kids that had been watching way too much tv. they went unanounced to station 5, trying to figure out how to get the clay birds to fly. they had one firearm for the 3, a Tech 9. I flipped on the cell and called 911 before the RO headed over to them. Luckily they didn't try to go Rambo on us. Then again, one tech 9 vs 25 skeet shooters................:eek:

Some people can't be born that stupid can they?
 
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