Stupidity at the gun range

I went with a couple buddies to the unregulated state run range yesterday, and had to deal with a little more stupidity than usual.  Mostly from the same group of guys.

First off, they were the “hunters sighting in their rifle” types.  Which means they’d take three shots, then immediately want to go cold so they could go check their targets.  This just pisses me off from a courtesy point of view.  Just because you’re done with your giant string of 3 shots in less than a minute, doesn’t mean the rest of us are.  Hell, there were several times when they called out to go cold just as either I or one of my buddies had just raised our rifle or pistol to shoot.

Oh, and going hot?  Apparently they just assumed that if everyone is back at the firing line that they didn’t have to say anything.  There were several times that I had to ask “so, you ready to go hot?” as they were loading a round into their rifle.  Granted, they were the only ones shooting at 100 yards (the other folks there were either shooting at the 50 or 25 yard berms), so it’s a pretty safe bet that if they were ready, the rest of were too, but still.  This did cause some confusion, and I know of a few shots fired by these guys or another group when I thought the range was cold.  Oh, and they thought the range was cold at one point when everyone else thought it was hot.

Annnnnd then there’s protection.  I was asking one of the guys a question and noticed that he had no ears on (he had prescription glasses, or else those probably would have been missing as well).  His response “eh, I left them at home.”  He thanked me when I offered some cheap earbuds from my range bag and stuck those in.  Later, when I walked away for a minute and found the guy’s 10 year old son hovering over my guns that were sitting on the bench (He was obviously bored and was honestly just looking, but still, that’s another thing…).  I noticed that he didn’t have eyes or ears either!  I quickly handed him some plugs and told him to put them in.  I probably would have asked him to go ask his dad if it was ok for him to try one or two of my .22 rifles, but I don’t let folks shoot without both eyes and ears.  The dad should have known better, but is an adult and it’s his choice if he wants to go deaf.  The kid not having eyes and ears made me want to punch the father in the face.

Oh, and notice how I keep referring to “rifle” when talking about this group?  Best I can tell, there were two guys, and one of their sons there, but only the one rifle.  Which the kid wasn’t shooting.  No wonder the kid was bored and wandering around to see what trouble he could find.

I won’t say it was entirely them, though.  One of my buddies brought a friend that seemed like a long time shooter.  Early on in the session, I went to set up a target, turned around, and saw him inspecting a Glock.  Guess where it was pointed while he was handling it?  Yep… right at me.  As he turned it, I could see that the slide was locked back, but we had a friendly “chat.”  At first he was wondering why I was upset that he was handling guns while the range was cold, when I told him “you had it pointed at me,” he responded that he had no idea that he was doing that.  I replied “that’s why we don’t handle guns when the range is cold.”  I’d like to think that it’s a sign of great restraint that I failed to either threaten or attempt great bodily harm on him.

So, to sum up… I had a gun pointed at me during a cold range, there were shots fired during a presumed cold period, folks without standard safety equipment, and lack of consideration to others.  Oh, and one of my buddies recounted a recent trip where he witnessed a guy trying to clear a jam by frantically working the slide while his finger was on the trigger.  Showed up where the guy blew a hole in the concrete doing it, too.

No wonder Naienko won’t go to that range again, and it’s not terribly surprising that a kid got shot there a little while ago.