I know there are a few hendread threads about range retards, but they make for such great stories! Post you best or worst range retard events here!

Today's-

Was at the local indoor pistol range and it was pretty busy. I really don't like shooting when there is a bunch of people but most looked like they knew what they were doing.  Well wouldn't you know it two of the local "Thug Life" types show up and start shooting in the lane next to me. They had rented a Glock (too bad not a Fo-Tay) and the normal missing the paper @ 5 yards began. I stoped to take a break and stepped behind the line and glanced at one of them about to shoot the Glock. I noticed his thumb was up over the back of his strong hand. Before I could say anything he pulled the trigger... There was blood. A good deal of blood. Worst part was he set the pistol on the table (muzzle downrange thankfully) and held his bleeding had over it..  I feel really sorry for the guy at the range who had to clean up that mess and the Glock...

I was at a indoor pistol range , a barley speaking english mexican brings a Colt 38 super to shoot and proceeds to rapid fire straight up in to the celing - the range officer grabed the gun from his hands and slammed it on the table real hard -and proceeded to lecture this dude & the guy did not understand a word of it -- it woulda been funnyier cept - all the pieces of celing & bullet that were bouncin all over the place hittin people !!

Tuesday at work a group of four came in, two of them were the gun guys and they were introducing the other two to shooting.  Good stuff right?

About 20 minutes later one of them came out and asked if I could clear a jam on one of his guns, I went out and the lane shelf had seven or eight handguns stacked up on it.  They were giving the other two a very diverse group of guns to try.

He points out a Colt 1903 .380 and I pick it up, I notice the right side hand grip is gone and that the magazine spring and follower are jammed into the bottom of the mag.  The slide is not quite in battery and is stuck hard in position, he told me the round had fired and then blew off the handgrip and burned his hand.  After slapping the back of the frame the slide finally broke loose and the round ejected onto the floor.

I checked the round and there was a twin split in the rear quarter of the case where it vented into the gun and the next thing I noticed was the headstamp 9mm luger.  Yes the nine fit in the mag but did not chamber fully and messed up a pretty nice gun.  

Moral of the story;

If you are shooting guns with different calibers, make DAMN sure you don't get mix them up.  He got off lucky, just some minor burns and some stinging in his hand.  

i was at an outdoor free public in ohio when the local university "gun club" showed up.  i had run across a few of these guys before but not all of them as a group.  there were about 20 of them.  they were safe enough when it came to not firing while behind other people.  but they couldn't seem to abide by the rule of paper targets only.  a couple guys went on the other side of the berm and were throwing water bottles up in the air for the guys to shoot at.  considering this was in the middle of a state park and there may have been people hiking, this was intensely dangerous.  i packed up my stuff and hit the road.  then i called the cops as soon as i got cell signal again.  i guess they cleared out or stopped doing stupid stuff before the cops got there cause i never saw anything in the paper about it nor did i get a call from the police asking me to identify anybody.  

and people would regularly shoot ar and ak on the pistol range.  the rules posted said pistol calibers only except for shotguns and then shot only.  i can't believe nobody ever got hit by a round coming off the hill that was the backstop for the range.  i got a .380 come back at me but it had no energy at all.  

tag!

I was at a local range in puttsburgh, and we called a all clear.  Everyone was good about keeping their muzzels downrange except for some college kids who decided to fan the entire range and officers with a loded AK.  

Same range, different time, my buddy and I where at the 100 yard line and some guy with an AR was starting to freak us out.  He was folowing all saftey procautions, it is just what he was doing.   He would let off a burst of three rounds through his AR, and then be like 'Yeah, you like that' or 'Yeah, right between the legs' and other where a mixture of sexually explicit sounds and phrases saying he wanted to 'fuck' his AR.  We moved down five benches to say the least and let the man playing with his nice rifle.

This isn't really a "range idiot" story, but it's pretty funny.

My brother bought a .50 DE from one of the local gun stores that has a range and they literally begged him to shoot it there. He goes into their indoor range, sets up, loads the DE, and touches off one round.

The entire range fell silent.

The guy next to him peeks around the beck of his lane and asks, "What in the hell is THAT????"

He said the everyone else on the range that day had .22s and 9mm.

They were.....impressed, to say the least.

Quoted: I was at a local range in puttsburgh, and we called a all clear.  Everyone was good about keeping their muzzels downrange except for some college kids who decided to fan the entire range and officers with a loded AK.   Same range, different time, my buddy and I where at the 100 yard line and some guy with an AR was starting to freak us out.  He was folowing all saftey procautions, it is just what he was doing.   He would let off a burst of three rounds through his AR, and then be like 'Yeah, you like that' or 'Yeah, right between the legs' and other where a mixture of sexually explicit sounds and phrases saying he wanted to 'fuck' his AR.  We moved down five benches to say the least and let the man playing with his nice rifle.

Quoted: This isn't really a "range idiot" story, but it's pretty funny. My brother bought a .50 DE from one of the local gun stores that has a range and they literally begged him to shoot it there. He goes into their indoor range, sets up, loads the DE, and touches off one round. The entire range fell silent. The guy next to him peeks around the beck of his lane and asks, "What in the hell is THAT????" He said the everyone else on the range that day had .22s and 9mm. They were.....impressed, to say the least.

That's classic!

I'd just like to say that with the exception of something drastic happening to my private shooting range, I'll never go to another public range again, NEVER!

Several years ago I was out at the mines shooting at a thousand yards with my (gone) savage .308 (shooting hald pieces of plywood painted white, I aint THAT good)  buddy is there with me and has an Mini-14 No optics.  Decides if I can hit it with my made for that shit kinda rifle, he can hit it with his Ruger I laughed and said ok, and started spotting for him I was watching through a spotting scope and start seeing dust kick up about 500 yards out.   I was telling him that and he was steadily getting more and more pissed off.  It'd jam and he'd get even more pissed off.  He put about 60 rounds down range with about 3 jams and finally got so pissed that he chunked that damn mini 14 down range, it was loaded and went off, putting a round into his truck bed.   We were only about 20 feet from his truck

Quoted: Several years ago I was out at the mines shooting at a thousand yards with my (gone) savage .308 (shooting hald pieces of plywood painted white, I aint THAT good)  buddy is there with me and has an Mini-14 No optics.  Decides if I can hit it with my made for that shit kinda rifle, he can hit it with his Ruger I laughed and said ok, and started spotting for him I was watching through a spotting scope and start seeing dust kick up about 500 yards out.   I was telling him that and he was steadily getting more and more pissed off.  It'd jam and he'd get even more pissed off.  He put about 60 rounds down range with about 3 jams and finally got so pissed that he chunked that damn mini 14 down range, it was loaded and went off, putting a round into his truck bed.   We were only about 20 feet from his truck

I woulda pulled out my WASR and showed you both up!

Quoted: Quoted: Several years ago I was out at the mines shooting at a thousand yards with my (gone) savage .308 (shooting hald pieces of plywood painted white, I aint THAT good)  buddy is there with me and has an Mini-14 No optics.  Decides if I can hit it with my made for that shit kinda rifle, he can hit it with his Ruger I laughed and said ok, and started spotting for him I was watching through a spotting scope and start seeing dust kick up about 500 yards out.   I was telling him that and he was steadily getting more and more pissed off.  It'd jam and he'd get even more pissed off.  He put about 60 rounds down range with about 3 jams and finally got so pissed that he chunked that damn mini 14 down range, it was loaded and went off, putting a round into his truck bed.   We were only about 20 feet from his truck I woulda pulled out my WASR and showed you both up!

Is it a 30 foot long one like the M-4 here?

Heres mine. I never been to a range untill i went to college we have a range out in the national forest. I grew up shooting in old rock quarries and out in the country on family land, but i was always taught to be safe with guns.

A couple of my college buddies and I went to the range to shoot our evil assualt weapons. There was a family there at the time. The father was shooting a couple of .22 rifles. We went to the end of the row so the brass from our guns would hit the other folks there. We set up the rifles and waited to get a all clear from the rest of the range and went to set up targets. While i was setting up my reactive targets i heard hey kids watch this. Before i got a chance to turn around this idoit started firing down range while i was still 150yards down range. The shooting quickly stopped. One of my Football player buddies had this guys gun in one handand his neck in the other. After i got back to the line i then instucted the father in the fine points in range behavior.

I only hope his children learned from his mistake

When I lived in Virginia, I was an armed guard.  I had to requalify, and the range and training company did some decnet stuff.  That time we had to do some shoot/no shoot drills (not state mandated, just to give people something to think about).  If you had a semi, you loaded the mag, and inserted it.  Didn't chamber a round though.  Well this one chick, for some reason said she had to qualify with a Sig.  She turns to face downrange and the target presents itself, without even bothering to see if it needed to be shot, she tries to fire.  Click, click. Oops, never chambered a round.  Well she spins around, finger still on trigger, and as she's pointing the gun at everybody who was watching, and the instructors, she says, "nothing's happening."  A couple instructors grabbed here and turned her back the right way and gave a very short refresher on safety.   I'd have kicked her dumb ass off the range after that.

[quote]Quoted:
I know there are a few hendread threads about range retards, but they make for such great stories! Post you best or worst range retard events here!

Today's-

Was at the local indoor pistol range and it was pretty busy. I really don't like shooting when there is a bunch of people but most looked like they knew what they were doing.  Well wouldn't you know it two of the local "Thug Life" types show up and start shooting in the lane next to me. They had rented a Glock (too bad not a Fo-Tay) and the normal missing the paper @ 5 yards began. I stoped to take a break and stepped behind the line and glanced at one of them about to shoot the Glock. I noticed his thumb was up over the back of his strong hand. Before I could say anything he pulled the trigger... There was blood. A good deal of blood. Worst part was he set the pistol on the table (muzzle downrange thankfully) and held his bleeding had over it..  I feel really sorry for the guy at the range who had to clean up that mess and the Glock...

Probably shouldn't tell this story, since its on me, but I think its sometimes useful to remember that we were all beginners once.

Couple of years ago, after finding out I lived about 2 miles from a nice outdoor range, I decided to get back into guns.  I grew up in NYC so never received any firearms training from Dad, uncles, etc.  First exposure to guns was at camp when I was a kid (BB guns and .22's).  Really loved shooting and was pretty good at it.  Decided, some 30+ years later, to get back into it.   Had never owned a handgunl, never shot a handgun, never received instruction on how to shoot a handgun and only seen someone shoot a handgun in the movies.  Went to a local range and rented a couple of handguns to try.  Range owner explained how to load, fire, etc, but not how to hold.  So I basically just immitated what I'd seen guys on TV do.  Figured to hands better than one.  Grab gun in right hand, wrap left hand around it, placing left thumb on right side of pistol.  (Basically what I assume "Thug Life" was doing in the above post).  Needless to say I met with similar results.  

Since then I've bought a bunch of guns, probably put 20,000 rounds downrange, and hopefully know a little more than when I started.  But I try to remember this story whenever I see someone else do something dumb.  I think most people who do this kind of stuff just don't know better.  For the most part I'd rather deal with a dumb newby than some of these "range commandos".  Usually with a newby if you politely point out what they're doing wrong they're apologetic and willing to learn.  With a "range commando" they can get real bent out of shape if you dare offer them constructive criticism.