A few months ago I was at one of the few indoor ranges in my area because it was very cold out side, when I had this experience. I want to know if I handled it correctly or if I should have been more polite.
I was at the local hand gun range. Shooting my BFR 45/70. The range has 7 lanes and I was in lane 2. There was no one else in the range at the time. I was shooting for about 20 min (Chronographing my loads and observing accuracy using a bench) when this guy comes in with a 9mm double stack hand gun. The guy takes the lane next to me (#3). At this point I tell him that my gun is pretty loud and that he may want to move to a farther way lane. I offered to move to lane #1 and have him move to lane #7.
The guy refuses and so I decide to be polite and move as far away as I can to lane #7. I tell him that I will be done in about 30 more min (checking speed on a chronograph is slow for me) or that if he was going to only shoot for a short time I would be happy to wait. The guy then pulls out 5 boxes of 9mm
and starts shooting with out even acknowledging me.
Once I start shooting it is obvious that my shooting is bothering the other guy because he is visibly flinching every time I fire. The guy then gives me a dirty look and he goes and gets the range officer. The range officer asks to see what I am shooting and then says that if I want to shoot rifle caliber I need to shoot in the out door range (Its mid winter in the mountains of Idaho so its pretty cold).
Instead of going out in to the cold I put away the BFR and take out my Coonan Classic in 357 magnum. I was going to eventually chronograph some really hot loads with a 110 grain bullet (light for a 357 magnum) over H110 (A good powder for a 357 magnum but tends to make big fire balls and shock waves) I originally was not going to shoot this gun this session but planned to eventually with these loads, but at this point I was frustrated.
So I start shooting this gun and it is obviously much louder than my BFR. It breathed fire like a dragon and roared like an f15 eagle.I fired 3 magazines pretty fast. The guy then looks really mad and again gets the range officer. The range officer asks to see this gun, he then asks if he can fire a round, I agree and he shoots it one time. He hands it back to me and says that "it is a very interesting gun" and gives it back to me. The range officer said that it was ok to shoot this gun at the indoor range and that I could shoot the BFR again when the range was empty.
The guy that was complaining then gives me a dirty look and leaves. I really did feel bad but not enough that I was going to leave.
Did I do the right thing? I have brought this story up a few times on other threads. It still bothers me because I usially am not the kind of guy that wants to cause problems.