"Crazy" stuff you've seen on the range...

[beltjones]

For all the time we shooters spend on the practice range, in classes, and in competition I'm sure we all have loads of stories of wild, scary, funny, or otherwise unusual things we've seen. Let's hear them!

Here's a start:

I shoot USPSA with a police officer who is a pretty good shooter and a nice guy. A few weeks back he decided on a whim to shoot his duty rig, including his duty pistol. He could barely finish each stage due to constant malfunctions. He said it had been a few weeks since he shot the pistol, and clearly in that time his magazine springs (I think he had four mags) all went kaput. It seemed like he was both embarrassed and freaked out that he had been carrying his duty gun for weeks not knowing it didn't work! I would have been freaked out as well.

Another: This was in a class I took. At the end of the first day we were going to be doing dry fire drills in a class room, and the instructor was extremely clear that there was to be no ammunition, at all, in the room. He told us outside the classroom to go put any ammo in our cars and lock it up. Then, one by one we stopped at the door and showed him an empty gun and empty magazines. The rule was, if you leave the room, you go through the whole "check in" process again. So we all got checked in, and the instructor told us that just to be even safer, he was going to frisk us to make sure there were no loose rounds or loaded magazines in anyone's pockets. Everyone consented. Well, about the third guy he frisked turned out to be wearing a bullet proof vest, and he had a .38 snub nose revolver on his ankle - loaded. The instructor "confiscated" the revolver, we finished the lesson for the day, and the idiot who owned the revolver wasn't invited to come back the next day.

[ToddG]

One of the first classes I ever taught: Before breaking for lunch, the students were told to go up to the berm and empty their guns. Most took their guns out of their holsters, ejected the mag, racked the slide, verified a clear gun, and reholstered.

One guy drew his gun and fired every round in the magazine into the berm, oblivious to the people around him, most of whom weren't wearing hearing protection.

Lesson: terminology matters.

[SLG]

Todd,

At least you only did that once. I've noticed that you now "empty your gun" without shooting every round in it

[Kyle Reese]

If you visit any public range and hang out for a while you run into all kinds of folks.

Some real gems from over the years:

-Shooter loading 5.45x39mm rounds into an AR mag, and it was NOT a 5.45mm mag, or upper. His rationale? He was told he could shoot 5.45x39mm ammo in a 5.56mm weapon by his drill sergeant.

-Shooter sees me shooting a Glock 17 in a class about 5 years ago with Rijndael, and tells me that I need to carry a "real mans gun" . His version of such a weapon was a steel S&W 9mm autoloader. I guess I wasn't feeling particularly manly that day when I selected a Glock 17 for the class.

[Joe in PNG]

For the most part, my range experience has been pretty unexciting in a good way. However...

1) At an indoor range I retrieved my target ( from 7 yards) and saw a .22 cal hole in it.
Problem was, I was shooting a 9mm, and the nearest shooter was at least 4 lanes away.

2) During my first stage at my first bowling pin match. I shot all the pins, removed my mag, cleared the chamber, and dry fired downrange to show empty. At that point the Safety Officer said "mumble muffle mumble". So, I took off my ear muffs and asked him to repeat himself. He said "you need to clear the table". I looked, and yep, still one lonely pin sitting on its side... you can imagine that having to re-muff and reload from condition 4 doesn't exactly do a lot to improve one's score.

[MattInFla]

A few years ago I was on a public outdoor range, shooting my pistol. A few lanes to my left, there were a couple guys shooting a revolver. At one point, they were changing the grips on the gun, so I thought nothing of hearing sporadic thumping from their position. I figured they were trying to encourage a recalcitrant grip to go onto or com off of the frame.

Wrong.

They were shooting a .38 special. They brought .357 mag ammo. They were pounding the bullets deeper into the cases so it would fit into the cylinder.

I tried to explain to them how unsafe that was, but they were not interested. I packed up and left before they managed to blow the poor revolver up.....

Matt

[Rverdi]

One of the first classes I ever taught: Before breaking for lunch, the students were told to go up to the berm and empty their guns. Most took their guns out of their holsters, ejected the mag, racked the slide, verified a clear gun, and reholstered.

One guy drew his gun and fired every round in the magazine into the berm, oblivious to the people around him, most of whom weren't wearing hearing protection.

I'm thinking I was there for that one and if it's the class I'm thinking of, there was there was also the student who, after asking if he could show his M-4 to a fellow student proceeded to fire it into the side berm while we spoke to yet another student.

I believe our response was something along the lines of "Uh, please don't do that anymore."

[beltjones]

You guys reminded me of a story, one that I'm suddenly not very proud of.

I was at an outdoor range nearby, and a lane or two over there was a European guy with an auto of some kind. We were both shooting, he with his auto and me with a 1911 that day, when they called the line cold so people could go downrange and reset targets. I didn't have anything to do, so I stood behind the "safety" line and waited for them to call the range hot again. Just then a friend of the Euro dude showed up. If you can picture a sleazy fashion photographer, that's what this guy looked like. Around his neck hung a massive digital SLR camera, and he started snapping pictures of the European dude. They called the line hot again, and the few of us on the line were busying ourselves with loading mags, putting our hearing protection back in, and so on.

At this point the Euro dude says to the photographer, "You need to go to the office and buy some ear plugs." "Ok, just a second." Says the photographer. A few more seconds go by and the guy is still snapping pictures. I finished loading my magazines when the Euro guy said again, "Seriously, they will start shooting soon, and it will be very loud." "I'll be ok. Just one second..." Was the reply.

Well, I waited about another 5 seconds to see if the photographer was going to make any pretense of leaving to buy some hearing protection (he wasn't), and I took aim and popped off a couple of rounds of .45 ACP.

"Oh my God." I heard the photographer say. "I told you!" Said the European guy. "Oh my God, my ears are ringing." Said the photographer. "Go!" Said the European guy, and he pointed to the range office. The photographer jogged briskly away from the shooting line, and came back a few minutes later with a set of rented ear muffs.

I feel pretty bad about it now. I really wasn't trying to be a jerk. At the time I just felt like the photographer had received plenty of warnings, and he just chose not to heed them (and I wanted to get back to shooting).

[YVK]

I spent two days in a class next to a fellow whose pistol draw consisted of pulling his Nighthawk out of holster, then holding that 1911 by the dustcover/slide with his weak hand so he could adjust his strong hand grip.
It was a pretty interesting mind game for me: he never violated any safety rules yet something in my brain didn't let me take off my plates for the entire class length.

[Frank D.]

Oh boy.

I live in Thailand (I'm half-Thai), finishing up school. The crazy shit you see here is unbelievable.

IPSC and IDPA are actually fairly popular around here, but its a very small number of people who compete regularly, and the vast majority have never shot a gun (this is related to laws regarding who can buy a gun, and the relative cost of guns and ammo themselves).

4-Rules? HA. No eyepro, check. Shells for earpro, check. Guys who'll go forward of the line while other shooters are not just hot, but still shooting, you bet. There are even cops who will unholster and hand you (a stranger) a live gun when you ask them what they're carrying.

Quick story about what passes for an experienced shooter (shoots every weekend, but not comps).

I went to a range with a new buddy of mine. He owns a gun store here, one of his sales people saw me ogling an Ed Brown in the window and, since over here I pass for white, called the boss over. Turns out he lived in the states forever, we get to talking yada-yada, next thing I'm going to the range with him the next weekend to go shoot his Brown.

We start off indoors and everything is normal. Guy looks like he knows what he's doing, is safe and whatnot. No alarm bells.

Then we head outside (no drawing inside). To my amazement, he begins to load facing up-range, flagging the spectators 30 or so yards away in the rest area with a freshly loaded gun. If you ever saw the movie 'Yes Man' then you can picture the reaction. I hit the deck so fast, my earpro smacked me in the face (literally, it came off my head and I watched it fall onto my face).

Apparently, having a table behind where we were shooting to throw our gear on made him think he should load facing that direction as well.

There are good ranges out here, and good (safe) shooters and ROs, but damned if I'm not watching everyone on the line, just in case.