Funniest/scariest time on the range?

[LASur5r]

Thought I'd revisit this thread since I recently had a little situation at our local shooting range. See if anyone else has some stories to tell.

One of the funniest things I've seen recently at a local indoor range is that at this range there are side baffles (read partitions) at each shooting bay so you have pretty good privacy and some protection, but the last time I was there, there was a young man who was more concerned about how he looked then how he shot.
This local Darwin award wannabee had a black trench coat on and he would make like he was drawing his .38 snub nose revolver ,jump into the middle of the shooting bay and dryfire down range. After about 20 times of this shennanigans, he finally loads his revolver.....puts it in his right hand, jumps out , levels his revolver, and pulls the trigger with the hammer coming down on his left thumb.
He looks down at his hand and with a loud wail, tries to snap the attacking revolver off of his hand. Result? that li'l revolver must have gotten some skin from the web of his hand because it wouldn't turn itself loose. Finally, he got it slowly off his hand with a lot of whining on his part.

[jadams951]

The closest I have come to a scary/funny time at the range is going shooting and realizing the range officer was a guy I arrested about a week earlier for dwi and he had his pistol on him and blew a .14.

[Kevlarman]

And people look at me funny for wearing a Kevlar vest to the range.

Eyewear, hearing protection.... you can never be too careful!

[Snowdog]

A few years back I took a friend to an outdoor range. There were only a couple others there, but one stood out. He looked as if he tried his darnest to look like a man of steel... butch hair, iron jaw, shooting a Ruger Super Redhawk and full of condescending smirks.

His steely facade came crashing down when he was challenged by a hornet. This little sucker seemed to have a bone to pick with Sgt Slaughter as I could clearly see this vendetta-driven hornet working him over. This tough guy then started slapping at it and screaming in panting spurts... screaming like a girl, as he was running in circles.

I was embarrassed for both Mr. Toughguy and for myself, simply for having to bear witness. I didn't have to convince my non-gun-owning friend that Ironman certainly wasn't an accurate representation of gunowners, that all groups and associations have those kinds mixed in, thankfully he was a step ahead of me and well aware.

Perhaps Muscleman was allergic and was trying to stave off any potentially dangerous stings, but it did seem quite humorous, especially so in retrospect.

[hdm25]

Funniest: When I shot a chipmunk at 100 yards with a 1911 in .45 ACP without using the sights. I didn't shoot again that day.

Scariest: Shooting with some SWAT guys at a police range when one of the non-SWAT cops who they had let shoot one of their MP5s lasered me with the subgun's muzzle with his finger still on the trigger. He had just fired about half the magazine on full-auto and was thrilled about it and had stepped back from the line with a happy look on his face to talk to his buddies. The selector switch was still on full-auto and he had part of the magazine left. I almost wet myself as I got out of the way. I didn't want to startle him or anyone else by moving quickly or yelling out something so I had to casually move toward him and to the side.

[GSMD Fan]

Okay, a scary one for you.

I am at a small range, maybe enough room for 4 pistol lanes. Backstop at the end of range with targets, then there is a 7, 14, 21 ft line with a overhead covered shooting stand at 50 ft.
Rule is you can shoot at the 14 if no one at 7, at 21 if no one at 7 or 14, etc. You get the concept .
Of course there is no range master so every one works together.

Myself and a pal are shooting. I work different distances but was working on drawing and firing from the 7.

Group of folks shows up. I the intrest of good taste I will not describe the folks. I would not want to be branded unsensitive to different cultures.
Well of course they have one expert who will be teaching the others how to shoot.
After they put some targets up I started shooting again.
I am at the 7, they are behind me at the 50 ft loading magazines talking whatever. A few times they walk up to the & load firearms and engage targets. I figure they understand the concept. One of the guys (non expert) starts shooting while he is at the 21.
So being a swift thinker I decide to back up real quick. Anyway expert kind of scolded the non expert, unsafe and all. I have seen many buffoons and troglodytes at that range
but that took the cake. I really do not like to hear bullets whiz by me. That was the last time I ever shot there. Too bad, but I found a nicer range, less buffoons and trogs, but I did meet a Democrat. :barf:

[foghornl]

One range (indoor) where I used to shoot had a lot of city PD and County SO folks that also shot there. Of course, thre was one guy that always bragged about how he could always pick out his target, no matter how much light/smoke/fog was present, didn't need 100% clear vision...yak yak yak.

So, one day the rangemaster told him..."...Hey, try out my new .357 loads. Supposed to be new formula, with less residue and muzzle flash. etc etc etc.

So, Sgt Rambo loads up, and pops a few. After round 3, can't see a thing. Rangemaster had loaded 'em with black powder.....Not even Pyrodex, the real charcoal based stuff.....

Mr. wise guy stormed off the line and didn't come back for 2 months

[hsvhobbit]

Ok, scariest? Public, unsupervised range. About 20-25 shooters on the 50 yd line, we all agree on a cease fire and everyone except a few go down range to paste/repair targets...No biggie, some folks do not need to repair their targets. One fine fellow, with his 10 yo child then decides to resume shooting since he's at the end of the range and no-one's withing 10 yds or so of his target. BUT EVERYONE'S STILL DOWN RANGE. He gets offended at all the screaming everyone's doing at him and replys "Well I'm not gonna hit anyone" (sigh) I think some of us seriously considered returning fire. I no longer shoot there.

[krept]

Scary:

Shooting in the desert with my (soon to be) brother in law and his GF. After going over the safety rules several times, it was time for the GF to shoot the AK. Magazine is loaded, safety is off, she's ready to go... shoots one round off, then with finger still on the trigger, she sweeps all of us with the muzzle and comments "I can't see if I hit the target or not!"

It was interesting because I got the mental image of being shot and falling backwards into a trench.

No matter how many times you cover the basics, some people just don't get it.

Funny: Guy at the range with his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle (two tone)... fires two shots off, has to clear a malfunction... fires one shot off... curses... has to clear another malfunction. Apparently this was his only firearm because he didn't shoot anything else for the 30 minutes it took to go through one box of ammo.

Funny #2: Two GQ kids shooting another .44 magnum DE at the range. One of them was laughing to the other about the fellow next to me shooting a 9mm and how it sounded like a bb gun. The guy next to me looked just like an undercover DEA guy... Hawaiian shirt, balding w/ ponytail. Well, they were so absorbed in their DE that they didn't see him pull out an MP5 from his range bag... when he emptied the magazine downrange in under 10 seconds, their reaction was priceless. Guy was a hell of a shot.

[kungfool]

two stories......

in 1978 I was crossing the desert on a 250cc enduro north of the El Paso international airport, swinging around west in back of the military base (Ft Bliss)...........after about two hours of losing line of sight of the mountains enough I got only slightly turned around. From what I could tell if I wanted to come out on the west side of the city i would have to turn a little more southward.

After just a bit my turn paid off when I found an almost unused 4 wd road....afetr a few minuyes of following it I entered another low spot where I could see no farther than maybe 100 yards in any direction. ...Wanting to be sure I was still heading the right way I shut off the bike and climbed to the top of an obviously man made plowed up berm of dirt.

As I stood there looking to the northwest I saw what was an old firing range, many of the targets and various other disgarded equipment were half buried in both the plowed up sand as well as the drifting sand.

Then I looked to the southwest. About 100 yds in that direction I saw another long berm that was horizontal and just to the west of me. Then I saw the red flag! In the next instant I heard a few rounds from an M16 whiz by somewhere near enough to me that I could hear them. Though I figured they had to be above my head (because of the berm between me and the range) I instantly dropped to the ground, rolled down the berm, jumped on my 250 and laying low, sped off in a northeasterly direction.

I didn't have enough fuel to make it the 30 miles or so I had come through the desert on the east side of the airport so at some point ( I was hoping it was about two miles) I had to head back to the west. It may have been paranoia, but at one point I thought I could hear rounds zinging by me as I zipped along between the low dunes. All I could think about was how stupid I would look when I was finally found, miles out into the desert, my corpse partially devoured by coyotes who had been smart enough not to prowl around back there during live fire exercises!

Just a couple of months ago just north of the berm that the illinois state police uses (They actually face the highway and fire with the 50 foot berm between them and the highway) at the local power company they found about 8 cars with bullet holes in them (two windshields shot) and a few more bullet holes in that building as well as in the garage door of a nearby home (unoccupied). It was reported in the local news but they never reported on the follow-up internal investigation.

My sources told me that some Chicago cops had been there that day to be schooled in fully-auto fire. Think one of them didn't hear the instuctor talk about how the barrel climbs so easily and unexpectedly when firing fully auto as opposed to semi-auto?


Keep your friends close to you, keep your enemies even closer.

[pdmoderator]

Scariest: The fellow next to me had his Glock 21 KB a couple of weeks ago.

He wasn't hurt but for a while I thought he had a broken hand. I escorted him out to the shop and yelled for the owner, who took it from there.

Turned out he'd been shooting reloads and double-loaded one. Both sides of the G21 were blown out. I found the feed ramp on the floor afterward.

- pdmoderator

[MJRW]

Friend tells me the story of taking his cousin shooting. His cousin wanted to shoot a Glock in a bad way so they rented one. Well, after my friend shoots, he instructs his cousin on everything again, and turns the lane over to him. Cousin goes bang a few times, then "click." A dud. Cousin looks at the firearm, then up-ends it to look down the barrel, finger on trigger. Friend grabs the gun, points it at the ceiling, then down range, sets it down. After waiting, he clears out the gun, packs up and makes them both leave.

[wesmalo]

Scene: An outdoor range.

Participants: Yours truly, uncle, uncle's cronies, local firearms safetry training officer.

A sunny day, mid summer. Handgunning.

Range officer pulls out his .44 Magnum to "test out the new trigger pull". (See where this is going?)

We continue to shoot at supplied benches.

Range officer, loaded, prepares to fire.

Fires.

Chunks of bench fly forth.

Heads swivel to range officer.

Piece of 2X4 missing from bench.

"Guess I took it down too much eh?"

Made sure that range officer stayed in front of shooters.

[LiveWire]

Funniest: Hot brass lands in the cleavage of a well-endowed female shooter next to me.

Scariest: I'm "alone" at the range right before dusk. I'm checking my targets with my earmuffs on (1st mistake) and my gun and ammo on the bench, 15 yards away (2nd mistake)---when suddenly I turn around and spot this guy standing right beside me. Turns out he was a reloader looking for brass. He thought I was the R.O. and wanted to know if I was fixing to lock up. My grim realization, of course, was that he could have been there to waste me, and I would have been none the wiser for it (i.e. dead).

I now make it a point to carry a backup when I'm at the range, and to remove my ear protection when I go a-checking.

[wingnutx]

My girlfriend was at a keg party in the desert many years ago, and a friend of hers decided to show off the gun he had stuffed into his waistband. He discharged it while drawing, and blew out a chunk of femoral artery, killing him.

Another of her genius friends was showing off his 9mm to his buddy, and accidentally shot him point blank in the sternum, killing him. This was in his home, not a range, though.

The last time I qualified with an M-16, the guy next to me shot 48 out of 40! Seems the next guy over wasn't staying in his own lane.

[jdege]

Shooting at an indoor range, working on smoothing out my trigger pull, so I'm working slow, perhaps two rounds a minute, at a NRA Bullseye target at 75-feet.

A pair shows up, take the lanes on either side of me, put silhouttes up at seven feet (not yards) and proceed to rapid-fire two magazines each downrange.

I bring my target back, after having fired ten rounds, and find that I have eight rounds in the black and eleven in the white.

[hdm25]

"My girlfriend was at a keg party in the desert many years ago, and a friend of hers decided to show off the gun he had stuffed into his waistband. He discharged it while drawing, and blew out a chunk of femoral artery, killing him.

Another of her genius friends was showing off his 9mm to his buddy, and accidentally shot him point blank in the sternum, killing him. This was in his home, not a range, though."


wingnutx, it's a wonder that your girlfriend isn't afraid that YOU will do something similar to yourself....or, maybe, you better be REAL careful around guns if things like that tend to happen to people she knows who have firearms.

Mexican carry while drunk and showing off your gun to a girl isn't the smart thing to do.

[MrAcheson]

Any kind of carry while drunk or while showing off is not a smart thing to do.

[TEA]

Along the lines of Wingnutx in terms of stupidity, but with a happier ending.

Sitting around a friends apartment, let call him Billy-bob, drinking beer and shootin' the sh#@. Billy-bob is cleaning his Glock after coming back from the range. Once he's done, he decides to dry fire it to check for function. Draws a bead on Friend #1 on couch and pulls trigger, draws bead on Friend #2 and pulls trigger. By the time he's swinging to draw a bead on me, I'm already across the coffee table in a forward role, comming up under his gun hand with an upward block at the same time that my upper punch lands in his groin. I took the gun out of his limp hand and was seriously tempted to beat his gasping like a fish face with it. He wasn't too happy with my method of instruction, but I think he finally learned rules #1 and #2 for firearms safety.

[wingnutx]

hdm25-

She was petrified of guns when we started dating. She is still skittish, but wants to learn and is turning out to be a pretty good shot. I'm a hardass when it comes to safety, which helps.

3 years ago she believed the whole gun-grabbing democrat party line. Now she can't believe she fell for that crap. (not hard to convince someone that guns are bad when they have such idiots for friends, though)

[pax]

I was in a shooting class awhile back, and we were working on our draw speed when one of the guys pulled his gun out and sent his paddle holster flying downrange. Whole class bust up laughing.

pax

[coonan357]

at the range with my coonan and some new recipe rounds and the local homeboy shooting club shows up with there glock thinking there the Sh** , starts shooting fast rounds in the stall next to me , I fired the coonan it ejects the shell high and bounces it off the air duct above and it goes down the back of homie's shirt ! neat dance followed and then they moved to the stall next to that ..

[redwal]

While receiving firearms instuction at the police academy we received S&W revolvers with these huge wooden grips. Next to me in line was Marcus, the class screwup, and on the other side of him was Val, a very petite female who had joined the department only because her boyfriend talked her into it(she didn't even have drivers license until we reached emergency vehicle operations but that's another story).
Our range instructors were sticklers on safety and during this particular course of fire, we were instructed to react as if on the streets. If you had a malfunction, clear it. In other words you had better have a very gooood reason to raise your hand to get an instructors attention. We had fired once when thru my earmuffs I heard Marcus calling my name in a stage whisper. Not wanting to PO our instructors, I 'whispered' back for him to shut up. At this point he started calling me louder and more urgently. As I turned to face him all thoughts of murder vanished as I saw what he was frantically pointing at. The petite female was struggling to get a good grip on those huge wooden grips with her tiny hands. To keep from dropping the revolver, she held it against her chest with the barrel pointing upwards, the muzzle of which was wavering approximately a inch or less from where the chin and throat meet. I felt my mouth drop open as my hand automatically went up waving frantically. The rangemaster called for a cold range and one of the assistant instructors stormed towards me obviously about to tear me a new one. As he stopped I began pointing at Val who was still in the same position, despite the call for a cold range. I looked back at the instructor who literally turned white. He jumped past me and grabbed the barrel of her revolver, pointing it downrange. We received a break for about thirty minutes to restore order. Val was taken off line while they attempted to locate aftermarket grips that would fit her. She never was able to qualify.

[Jayman]

Well, this all reminds me why I wear a turtleneck shirt and a ballcap to the range at all times, in addition to the hearing and eye protection. Some of you are making me think that kevlar wouldn't be a bad idea either. I'm usually at the range at odd hours, so there's not usually a lot of people there. (I hate people.) The only thing I ever see is people shooting big guns with big loads, and very poorly. It's funny watching somebody turn a larger than life size sillouette into something resembling a big block of swiss cheese. Aim much? That .44 mag making you flinch?

[jdege]

I see these so-called experts on the range, very carefully sending all thier bullets through a very small hole.

Seems to me they aren't getting full use out of their targets.

Spread those holes around some!

Get full value for your money!