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That is what I should have done.

I don't know that the other two people in my story learned anything, which is why my friend hasn't been back, but at least I recognized my own mistakes.

A friend of mine from school showed an interest in firearms, mostly because of movies and videogames. He doesn't own any guns because he lives on campus, and he hadn't gone shooting since he was a Boyscout. Unfortunately, the Scouts did him the disservice of telling him he knows how to shoot, when in fact, they hardly taught him anything. That made him somewhat resistant to learning new things. He also knew nothing about gun safety, not even the stuff that should be common sense, so I had to watch him very closely, but this story is not about him.

There's this place where I used to shoot. Some guy's private property. It's a woodsy area with a river running through it. There are a couple good places to set up pistol targets, facing the woods. The vegetation sort of naturally divides it into two large lanes. I took my friend there to let his try some things from my collection. There was a group of people I don't know in one "lane" and we took the other. I set my fiend up with the old Mark I that I leaned with, when I was little. I worked with him until he was gripping it properly, and no longer trying to swing it every which way, with his finger on the trigger. At that point, I felt it was safe to look somewhere other than his hands. I looked at his target, to see where he was hitting, and I saw movement off in the trees.

Apparently, someone in the other group had gone downrange, and then wandered off through the trees, until they were behind our targets. I told my friend to put everything down and not touch anything until I got back. I ran after the guy, and screamed in his face while wildly gesturing to get try him to understand his surroundings. He just said, "okay" and went back to his group. I don't think he realized how lucky he is that my friend anticipates real bad.