I was checking into the range a couple of days ago, when a woman shot herself. Some dudes came out into the store area yelling about a gsw. Several folks started dialing 911. I unzipped my BOK compartment and took the contents into the range area. I'll skip the detailed visuals, but it did not look promising. There were two people kneeling with her, who seemed to know about as much as I did - i.e., not much. I had nothing additional to offer except the stuff from my BOK. One of the dudes kneeling had his hand on the chest wound, I gave him the Olaes bandage. A cop arrived, an off-duty paramedic started to help, too. I got out of the way, the bus showed up and took her away. The debriefing and paperwork ensued. The off-duty paramedic told me later that the bandage almost made the difference. I guess that's something.
For a while, it looked like this might have been an accident - the gsw was in the chest, and there was some ill-advised malfunction clearance happening right before the gsw. The woman left a note for her family, though, so this is being ruled a suicide. That makes me feel a lot better, for some reason.
I've signed up for the first BLS class I could attend in my area, and will sign my wife up for one soon after. I'll look for additional training after that - I'm especially interested in the WFR cert, it seems like a good combo of prevention, trauma from mild to serious, and outdoor-relevant skills, without a bunch of EMT stuff that I won't be able to use. I'll reconsider my BOK, maybe add some simple gauze as well as the Olaes.
I've been getting sloppy with my range trips - heading out not quite early enough, so that the place isn't as empty as I like. I'm reasonably comfortable, for example, at the NRA range when it's full, because while the RSO's aren't perfect, they're at least somewhat vigilant. There's no public range I know of within an hour of me that allows holster and rapid fire, and is also RSO'd in any meaningful way. My AO has a, ah, "higher than average yahoo saturation level." I'll be more careful about the timing of my range trips in the future.
........
Don't really know what I'm offering here with this post. Hey, guys, listen up: guns and gun ranges can be dangerous! I guess, if you guys can think of any other useful lessons from this, I'd love to hear them.