Stupidity at The Range

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Went to the National Forest "public range" to shoot pistols. Young guy and his girlfriend park to my left and the guy starts shooting an AR-15 or and SKS or some dang assault-type of deal, spraying me and my 1987 Jeep Wagoneer with brass.

Since it's not the first time, I stop shooting, holster my gun and try to catch the brass as it flies by for amusement. When he's done, I shoot some more. After two or three cycles of this, Guy's girlfriend notices, tells him. Guy apologizes, goes back and does the same thing from a different spot. Comes back, apologizes again. I'm thinking it's pretty funny (funny absurd) by now.

Goes back and shoots pistols with his girlfriend for a while. Picks up assault deal again and sprays me and my car with .223 brass. Comes back, apologizes again and says something like, "Man, if I was you I'd be going ballistic. I hate it when some inconsiderate %^$*#%$# sprays me with brass."

I tell him it's a public range and if I cared about my car, I would have parked twenty feet further away, 'cause I been hit with brass before. I tell him he and his girlfriend should go and have a good time and not worry about it. So they do, and it all works out fine.

When the guy leaves, he gives me a couple of boxes of .22 ammo he has left over and we laugh and part friends.

Regards,

Ledbetter
 
I was at a range in Reno, Nv and some guy had just stormed out of his booth and then another guy walked out after him, I found out later that the guy had just passed his range test for his C.C.L. but was failed at the last minute for shooting the bench by mistake.

After he knew he had qualifyed he relaxed and thought all was well, until he pulled the trigger on his revolver before he had it leveled, he wanted to try a "holster draw" before he left.

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Everyone has memory lapse. At one range i use to go to, they had a yellow line which you aren't supposed to cross. they are really strict about the yellow line. which is cool. one day I forgot and walked into the area insdie the yellow line to get out go out to check my target. they gave me a friendly reminder.

sometime when I'm at a friends house and I'm playing with an upper to my AR, I will accidently muzzle sweep the room as I return the upper it its case. no one really cases because there isn't a lower connected to the upper, but I always get mad at myself.

as to getting mad at because you getting hit with brass is happens and it doesn't bother, me. most people are really polite about it. I try to leave at least one bench between me an the next guy, because I know my ARs will throw brass into people if I don't.

The best way to approach someone who is being unsafe i think is to explain to them sternly, not to scold them or yell and scream. but thats just my opinion



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It ain't mah fault. did I do dat?
http://yellowman.virtualave.net/
 
A few weeks ago I had the misfortune of sharing a public range with a family of frighteningly unsafe shooters.

I was practicing bullseye shooting at one bench when a 60-ish man and what appeared to be his two adult sons set up at a bench about 10 yards to my right. When I glanced over, I saw that Pops had made an unannounced trip downrange to set up a target while I was shooting! I immediately ceased fire and waited for him to return to the firing line. He did and I resumed my practice.

My next glance revealed that Son #1 was shooting some sort of Ruger semiauto from the bench. When he emptied the magazine, not only did Pops amble downrange again, but Son #1 kept his pistol in hand, action closed, pointed downrange, with his finger on the trigger! They did this several times: shoot a magazine, then go downrange to look at the target.

I thought about saying something but decided that since these fellows were only endangering each other, I wouldn't waste my time. I also considered telling the range officer but thought he might be unhappy if I interrupted his nap.

What happened next finally spurred me to action: I looked over again and saw that Pops was showing a single action revolver to Son #2 -- and naturally, he was holding it sideways with the barrel pointing directly at me. :mad: That's when I finally walked over and asked him, as politely as I could, to keep his gun pointed downrange and away from my head. He agreed and I finished my shooting, realizing that I wouldn't be able to concentrate any more with a trio of armed morons nearby.

I left the range thinking that Oliver Wendell Holmes was right. :D
 
Maybe I went a little far with the guy. But he had already been warned twice by the RO's and everyone has to read and sign the rules and sign before going onto the range. And the rules are very explicit, there is no mistaking the meaning.

If the rules are well established and you are forced to read and acknowledge them prior to shooting then follow them. If you have any questions then ask them.
 
Ledbetter-

You and I share the same attitude. Life is too short to sweat the small stuff- especially when you are there to have a good time.
 
Some of these reports sound a lot like Zero Tolerance to me. A firearm pointed at you is not always dangerous. It is a testimony to your Firearms Expertise to know the difference.
Have you ever been around someone carrying in a horizontal shoulder rig? Could you begin to count the times it was pointed at someone?
This is not meant to minimize safety, only to point out the obvious.
Is there a difference?

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Better days to be,

Ed
 
I go to work wearing a IIIA vest and praying that no one fires a gun.
why would anyone go shooting knowing that unsafe people abound and not wear a vest?
its a small price to pay for a little "peace" of mind.
 
Hueco -
I'll take my chances with the bullet falling from the sky. Read a report a while back on that very subject. Found that a bullet in freefall reaches, at most, 350fps. They even managed to get a couple to fall back on a piece of pine (how, I have no idea) and all it did was dimple it.

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"...and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one."
Luke 22:36
"An armed society is a polite society."
Robert Heinlein
"Power corrupts. Absolute power - is kinda cool!"
Fred Reed
 
350 fps=230+mph

How heavy a bullet would you be willing to be hit by at that speed? ;) Not uncommon for people to be killed by falling bullets. One poster here related that his neighbors were shooting into the air and he found holes in his metal-roofed shed the next day.
 
mk86fcc

You are incorrect, a physics tells us that a bullet will fall to the ground with the same velocity it had when it left the barrel. Maybe a little less due to air resistance but not much less.

At the ranges I go to, the barrel is up when your transporting or down range when you at the line because the line is covered, and if there should be a discharge, you can get to cover and a bullet peircing the roof would have lost a lot of velocity.
 
Sorry chink, but you have it wrong, not mk86fcc. The bullet will reach a certain terminal velocity depending on its shape. And that velocity is far, far less than the muzzle velocity it started out with. Of course, you could be in a balloon, catch the bullet at the apex and reload it in a case and fire it back at Earth. ;) But barring that, it will fall back with much less velocity.

Even in a vaccuum the velocity may be less on the return trip than on the outgoing trip. But in that case, it will constantly accelerate due to gravity since there is no air resistance to cause it to reach a terminal velocity until it hits Earth. So if you get it to go high enough, I suppose the terminal velocity could exceed the muzzle velocity. I don't feel like trying to do the math to find that height boundary.
 
The worst one I saw was at a local indoor range.A man bought a sig 230 and said it jammed all the time for him.He left it there and the local gunsmith took in and tried it out.It would not jam,so he gave me some ammo and told me to try it.I couldn't get it to jam even holding it with 2 fingers.The guy comes back a couple of days later with children in tow.I happened to be there at the time so saw it all.He picks the gun up with some ammo and they all go out on the range.He fires the sig and it jams for him.He jacks it and looses it completly.Throws the gun on the concret floor with hammer back and round in chamber,then promply kicks it across the floor. 3 of us saw it and talked to the range owner.The guy spends money in there and didn't get kicked out or chewed out.
By the way I think the reason the gun jammed for him was he had a finger on the slide and was slowing it down to where it wouldn't function.

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beemerb
We have a criminal jury system which is superior to any in the world;
and its efficiency is only marred by the difficulty of finding twelve men
every day who don't know anything and can't read.
-Mark Twain
 
Ed Brunner: The difference is that a holstered gun is not in someone's hand. What I tell my friends when I am first teaching them about guns is that rule #2 is that you never point a gun at something you don't wish to destroy when you are holding it. I explain that I consider it OK to have a gun that has been made safe pointed at someone, as long as it is not being handled. How else could one ever deal with being at a gun show? The first time I went to a show it was quite a realization that I had literally hundreds of guns pointed at me at any one time. Now, I said a gun that has been made safe is OK, I'm willing to consider a gun safe when it is in a holster that covers the trigger and the person's hand is no longer on it.
 
As to the bullet coming back down to earth . When I was a young paratrooper we were told that if the chute became a problem ( read:didn't open ) and the reserve screwed up as well we would approach the planet Earth at 120 mph . Since the round began from a stop it seems that gravity is it's only driving force . I don't want a war ( had one , didn't like it ) over this but am curious about the math involved . My Jump School Sgt. could have been wrong . If he was YOU tell him . When I was beat to hell from running and he was STILL running , BACKWARDS , and NOT sweating , the words " Don't dick with this man " seem like words to live by . IMHO

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TOM
SASS AMERICAN LEGION NRA
 
Paratrooper, 120mph sounds about right. I think the average human can reach 220mph if they streamline their body.

Its all about aerodynamics. Interestingly with the bullet, it comes down base first. There is very little air resistance to spinning, so this means the bullet keeps spinning. Just like a top, it doesn't turn over once it starts coming down. So, the bullet doesn't come down as fast as it could if it pointy side down.

The air resistance keeps the speed from increasing beyond a certain amount.

Sprig
 
Like Sprig, I think the Sarge was correct. I have heard that the terminal vel. of a human is around 120 MPH.

If you really want the math for a falling body, I'll put it up. But the main thing is that the acceleration due to gravity is eventually balanced by the drag caused by air resistance and then a body falls at a relatively constant speed. When you think about it, the exact same thing happens whether the chute opens or not. It's just that the chute has considerably higher drag so you have a much lower terminal velocity.
 
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