Will mall ninjas rule the world after the election?

[HamsterHamster]

I was at an indoor range today and thought occurred to me.

Several young gentleman on the next lane were practicing shotgun patterns with their tacticool .223 AR, 9x19 plastic rifle and .40 Glock.

All demonstrated poor range safety and etiquette. One of them even ND'd on the concrete floor.

However, judging from the way employees from the gun store interacted with them, and they way they treated my bolt action and Side by side (both current production) like some C&R pieces. My guess is these young gentleman and their choice of firearms were the core customer of many gun store these days.

Perhaps they were onto something.

Imagine a scenario where social order is lost (say after an bad election) or the postulated zombie apocalypse (which I still don't get). These fine young gents with their awesome firepower, (ie deagles, plastic rifle with lasers and tacticool shotguns with multi-megawatt lights) would certainly elevate to the top of the social food chain.

How am I going to defend my wife, food and truck with my feeble 20ga, wearisome bolt-action or my anemic .380 1908?

Perhaps we should stop making fun of them and go out and buy a Glock 18.

[hoytinak]

All demonstrated poor range safety and etiquette. One of them even ND'd on the concrete floor.

If that's the case, then that should've been brought up to the range master. Other than that I'm not sure I get the thread. I own both newer and older firearms and would hate to be discriminated against because I own and shoot newer firearms.....but then again I see it more and more, the dividing line between firearms enthusiasts that should'nt exist and that's gonna hurt us as a whole in the end.

[Pistolgripshotty]

How am I going to defend my wife, food and truck

Get a Mossberg 12ga. with a pistolgrip only!

[Pilot]

There are many younger people that are taught good firearm safety practices, and range etiquette. However, there are many that get there gun handling practices from movies. Stay away from the latter.

[MLeake]

With regard to foolish behavior types, there's ignorant and there's stupid.

You can't fix stupid.

You can fix ignorant, so long as ignorant isn't in cahoots with bad attitude - but then, that would be stupid.

I've run into the occasional ignorant (IE untrained, uninformed, but not willfully stupid) shooter while at public ranges. Assuming they didn't seem to actually mean any harm, and assuming they seemed approachable, it struck me as a better idea to try to teach them good habits, than to turn them into the range officers or management types.

Guess I've been an ok judge of character, since I haven't received negative attitude from those guys. The ones I've approached have been happy to receive some gun handling advice, and to improve their target shooting while they were at it.

It takes a bit more effort than does a quick report to the RO, but it probably has better long term results for the shooting community.

[trg42wraglefragle]

If the world does descend into complete chaos (which I highly doubt) then I'll be going bush with my 22lr and my 223 and will be quite safe from the lead flinging mall ninjas who will most certainly dies out very quickly as even the most effective 360 dual wielding no scope Call of Duty BS warriors need to be able to catch food and survive the weather conditions.

Ones ability to keep warm and dry and survive off the land will be farm more useful than ones ultra Tactical torch that runs out of batteries after a days usage.

[Kreyzhorse]

Imagine a scenario where social order is lost (say after an bad election) or the postulated zombie apocalypse (which I still don't get). These fine young gents with their awesome firepower, (ie deagles, plastic rifle with lasers and tacticool shotguns with multi-megawatt lights) would certainly elevate to the top of the social food chain.

I'd take a disciplined shooter who has practiced his craft using a single shot over a novice using a gun he isn't proficient with. More firepower doesn't always mean victory.

[jephthai]

I started out with patterns instead of groups. But I watched some of the older guys making one-hole groups with handguns at 30 yards, and set myself a goal to improve. I think there's hope for someone who looks at it that way -- tacticool may get someone in the door, but witnessing real skill should have a positive effect. That said, if they don't recognize the skill disparity, or never notice that they suck compared to others, there's probably no hope!

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[thedudeabides]

Jokes aside, the reason I currently am a member of a "professional" gun club/range is that it seems to me that a lot of idiots have been buying firearms lately... and I have seen some really scary behavior at less safety conscious public ranges where they won't kick you out for being an idiot. Likely because the range master is an idiot who attended one NRA safety course.

Stuff I've seen:

-shooting metal target holders out of frustration and sending ricochets back uprange
-not clearing guns before resetting targets
-pointing loaded firearms in any other direction besides downrange. I had an idiot have a misfeed which jammed the slide in his Ruger POINT THE BARREL OF HIS GUN AT ME when he backed away from the range and then tried to hand the gun over to me, still barrel first, to see if I could clear the blockage. I almost swatted it out of his hand to point it back downrange.
-drawing on ranges that specifically forbid it
-setting up right next to the left of you in an empty range (when they can just as easily set up 10 yards away) then sending brass flying in your face because they're shooting an overpressured ammo
-wandering onto the range because they've dropped their earmuffs without calling a "cold" signal.

Offenders usually are college age idiots with new plastic guns. Groups of two or more are scary, and it gets worse if they have a girl in short shorts they're trying to teach to shoot like a badass. I saw a girl clear a smouldering round with a bad primer into a TRASH CAN, then have it cook off behind her like a firecracker.

Morons like these give gun owners a bad name.

[Brian Pfleuger]

We don't do TEOTWAWKI threads.