Range Safety Violations

[HankB]

Some years back I was working as a range officer at our gun club when we were open to the public for deer rifle sight-in. I'll have to say virtually all shooters listened to direction and seldom needed to be corrected more than once, but one exception still stands out in my mind.

A father comes in with his young son. While the guy is sighting in his gun, the kid - probably around 10 years old - starts climbing on the berm just to the left of the firing line.

Now, this berm is made of a stack of tires filled with dirt . . . it's about 10 feet high and separates the range I was managing from the firing line of an adjacent range, which was HOT at the time.

So I told the kid to stop climbing and get off the berm.

Kid gets mouthy - "You're not my father! You can't tell me what to do!"

So I YELLED at him to get off the damn berm, at which point the father puts down his deer rifle and gets in my face telling me not to yell at his kid.

Kid is STILL on the berm!

So I told the father in no uncertain terms that there was a live range on the other side of the berm, and his kid was going to get his . . . gosh darn . . . head shot off. The reaction? Dad wanted ME to APOLOGIZE to the kid for yelling at him, and THEN the kid would come off the berm! Not before!!!

I'd tried to be civil, but ended up telling the father to get both himself and his juvenile delinquent kid the . . . heck . . . off the range, off the club property, and NOT to EVER come back. Had to pick up the intercom to the range office and actually tell them to call the sheriff before the idiot and his kid finally - with poor grace - left, leaving behind a string of verbiage sure to draw the ire of forum moderators were I to repeat it here. (Wonder how - or if - the kid grew up, with that kind of father.)

(I got some applause from the rest of the crowd for kicking the fool off the range. )

[R_Comstock]

Kudos for standing your ground, sir!

[joe817]

Hank, you probably saved that idiot boy's life. And the idiot father's actions gave him away as an idiot with a gun. Good show!

[witchdoctor575]

if there is one thing I can't stand, it is a wild child out in public and parents that don't discipline. I get comments on how well behaved my kids are out in public and until my 12 year old can show me more maturity, he won't see a shooting range or the rifle I have for him.

[Mikel]

Got kicked off the range once. But it was for shooting the thumb-tacks that were meant for holding the targets. We even offered to supply her with many more thumb-tacks but she insisted that we were up to no good. Sadly the range closed down shortly after that and we never got to take her more thumbtacks in good faith.

[marksiwel]

Got kicked off the range once. But it was for shooting the thumb-tacks that were meant for holding the targets. We even offered to supply her with many more thumb-tacks but she insisted that we were up to no good. Sadly the range closed down shortly after that and we never got to take her more thumbtacks in good faith.

Heh, I do that too

[R_Comstock]

OK, last one for me. I had this one girl who worked with me who couldn't shoot the broad side of a warehouse so me and this other guy I worked with who was a pretty good shooter decided we would help her out. We took her to the range on one of our days off and got her used to handling a couple different weapons and then taking them apart and what-not. She seemed comfortable, so we loaded a magazine and let her go at 15 yards. She popped off a couple rounds and couldn't hit anything but eventually, BAM she hits the target! We were all so proud that we had helped her get to this stage and right about that time...you guessed it...she turns around, finger still in the guard, "I hit it!"

"Jessica," I say "Keep your muzzle pointed down range and your finger out of the guard, please."

"What?" BANG!

"I think that's enough for today."

[howdy]

I know that CHL Instructors have seen some "amazing" stuff. I explain to my students that the CHL class is NOT a shooting class. I expain to them that they need to have the shooting skills BEFORE they take the class........but every now and then, you get one!!!!!! I had a student that loaded the bullets in the magazine backwards. They somehow succeeded in getting the magazine in and letting the slide go forward. They tried to turn around to show me that their gun was jammed, but I stopped them. I saw the problem and told them to fix it. They did not know how to release the magazine. I then questioned them again on their shooting experience and she fessed up that it was her first time to shoot. I unloaded her handgun, placed the bullets back in the box, and had her go out and talk to the nice shooting instructors at Memorial Shooting Center in Houston. She came to the range on my next class and did a great job.

Have you been at Academy/Outdoor World (any gun store) and watched people handle the new handguns. (including some salesman) You can tell who the shooters are. They are the ones that clear the handgun when it is handed to them. They keep their finger off the trigger and they DO NOT point it at everyone in the store. I actually had a salesman get insulted that I cleared a new handgun right out of the sales case. He said "you don't think I would give you a loaded gun do you". I was nice to him......I really was.

[R_Comstock]

"You don't think I'd hand you a loaded gun, do you?"

No, sir I have no idea what you or anyone who handled it before you would do. :) A shame he would be 'insulted' about a little gun safety.

[Dutch]

I've only taken a few people shooting for the first time, but based on this kind of advice on TxCHL and other forums, they always only get one round loaded for the first shot. You just never know how they're going to react. If they do well, they get 2 or three rounds the next time. They don't get a full mag until I feel I can trust them a bit.

I taught my 12 year old daughter to shoot clays last summer and this is what we did. She actually started out with a single shot 20 gauge but when we moved to the pump or semiautomatic she still only got one shell handed to her by me. Next season She will probably get two shells.

[Dutch]

Have you been at Academy/Outdoor World (any gun store) and watched people handle the new handguns. (including some salesman) You can tell who the shooters are. They are the ones that clear the handgun when it is handed to them. They keep their finger off the trigger and they DO NOT point it at everyone in the store. I actually had a salesman get insulted that I cleared a new handgun right out of the sales case. He said "you don't think I would give you a loaded gun do you". I was nice to him......I really was.

I get a mix. Sometimes they clear the gun and some times they don't before they hand it to me. I always clear when I receive it and again before I give it back.
If it is a hand off between friends I clear it where the friend can see the chamber at the same time I do before I hand it to them.

[7075-T7]

Once at a skeet range my father and I were at, this teenager loads 3 rounds into a 20ga semi-auto for skeet. Surprisingly he hits the first two skeet so he turns around to look at his father and smile and BLAM, he shoots a hole in the ground about 6" from his foot and 6" downrange. Both his father and the range officer stepped back about 6' He obviously had learned the keep it downrange and pointed down rules, but not the booger hook off the bang switch rule...

I'm sure glad I didn't shoot my foot off, I mean... this kid didn't shoot his foot off

I definitely learned my lesson that day.

[MojoTexas]

I've been teaching my grandsons firearm safety at home. First with an airsoft replica of a Sig P229 (full size metal full weight, slide recoil and all). I drilled them over and over (not just oral instructions, but actual physical drills) on finger off the trigger, point at target, finger on trigger, finger off trigger, point at ground in front of you, repeat.... No matter how many time you tell someone orally it doesn't build muscle memory.... Once they 'almost' had the hang of it we repeated with one of my real pistols and snap caps... I had to repeatedly point out that they were keeping their finger on the trigger.... Only after I said "I can NOT take you to the firing range until you demonstrate to me that you remove your finger from the trigger every time you remove the aim from the target." did they get the message.

Ya know, I have a son who is almost 2 years old, and I've given a lot of thought to how I will teach him firearm safety, and I'm planning to use Airsoft pistols as well once he's older. If I teach him to treat the Airsoft like a real pistol, it should make his transition to "real" guns smoother.

[hotrodscott]

I was at the indoor range last weekend. It was really crowded, but I got an open lane right in the middle. On my left, a grandpa was teaching his two grandsons (looked to be 8 and 10 or so) how to shoot. On my other side some college age guy was teaching his girlfriend to shoot. Everything was going fine, and I was taking a reload break. It was kind of quiet, so I could hear the guy telling his GF how to improve her groups. While they are pointing at the target (at 5 yards) and talking about site pictures, I hear a bang from the lane with the kids on my left, and the gal on the right starts cackling because they had just shot a perfect bulls-eye... on her target!! Now I really don't see how hitting a target at 5 yards two lanes over without leaning all the way over the shooting bench is even possible, but they had done it. I looked at the guy around the back of the wall, and looked at the rangemaster through the glass who was watching everything, and neither seemed particularly concerned about it, so I decided I was done for the day.

I was politely mentioning it as I was waiting for the rangemaster to punch my time card, but then the guy from the far end of the range that had been sighting in some cannon that probably cost more than my first 3 cars put together burst in there and came unglued on the RM. The RM was defending them and said he'd been watching them. (At that angle, the bullet must have hit the wall about 20-25yds in front of that shooter) Anyhoo, I'm definitely going to stick with going on the weekdays during my lunch break when nobody is there.

To his defense, everything I heard coming from the grandpa was good stuff as far as safety and instruction goes. I applaud him for taking the time to spend time with his grandsons and to teach them an important life lesson; he just needed to be a bit more proactive and hands-on on the actual shooting... maybe just take one at a time next time or something, so he can give them each his undivided attention.

[Gearheart]

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.