Dumbest thing you've seen at the range?

Status
Not open for further replies.
The other day at the indoor range, this couple were making out every couple of minutes at the lane. :confused::what:

And another day this guy was pointing his laser sights all over the place, the ceiling, other people's targets, the walls...very annoying... :cuss:

Mostly people at the range I go to are well behaved... its in Westland, MI....it starts with the letters "Firingline....: ;)
 
About twenty years ago, just after I got out of the military and moved to Arizona. I visited Ben Avery range for the first time. I'm set up at the far end of the range. About an hour into the range session, an old guy comes in and sets up two tables down from me. He unpacks an absolutely beautiful Kentucky rifle, and all the gear to shoot it.

As I'm shooting, I keep and eye on him. As I watch, he gets out a plastic bowl, dumps and entire can of black powder into it. He then starts dipping powder out of the bowl, and pouring it into the barrel of his rifle.

ALL THIS TIME, HE HAS A LIT CIGARETTE HANGING OUT OF HIS MOUTH!

I run down, point this out to the RO, who turns white, runs back, kicks the guy off the range.

And telling on myself. When I was young and knew everything, I was less conscious of safety, I put a hole in the ceiling directly above my head with my 45.
 
field firing on dartmoor uk army training area big boggy hilly wet.
jungle run type cqb exercsie running down stream bed engaging pop up targets at short range bayonet fixed bags of adrenalin come round corner to be confronted by party of ramblers complete with walking sticks and bobble hats :what: so hyped up go running through them screaming and continue with practice directing staff impresssed .
huge row follows ramblers vs sncos did'nt think old people could use such language:D
 
This wasn't exactly at the "range" :uhoh: , but myself and a friend "less than sober" in another friends canoe on a lake in the woods at night "hunting" beaver. :eek: My friend held the flashlight while I shot :what: , but we did make it back to the shore without any injuries...including to the poor beavers. Ummm...very interesting night...probably the most fun I have ever had (with or without being an idiot). :p
 
Waste of $$$

This incident was not at a small arms range but it is still funny in retrospect. When I was in the military I was assigned to provide medical support at a TOW anti-tank missile live fire. We had beautiful weather for Germany that day and all was going well until a visiting "dignitary" showed up on the firing line. I believe he was a Congressman or an aide to one. Anyways, they were firing the missiles from ground launchers and the "dignitary" insisted on being right next to the launcher. The gunner fired his missile which being "wire-guided has to be "guided" to it's target. Immediately after the missile left the tube the visitor grabbed the gunners hand for a handshake photo op! While this poor guy is trying to guide a very expensive missile to it's target! Well the missile headed off to parts unknown(I don't know if they ever found where it impacted). I believe those missiles at the time cost around $20,000 each! The "dignitary" left shortly thereafter....
 
I have been witness to mindless morons and their off spring.

#1) At range with supposedly well know rules....the son of a member was handling guns while the like was cold and his dad was downrange.
#2) At another local range a few of the so called P2C instructors were doing their range testing, and well their students (non members) were breaching the firing line to oogle their targets (with the instructor having just about every NRA instructor patch plastered over his shirt), the better part was his associate with two more students were handling guns behind the firing line.
#3) Recently at the indoor range in Robbinsdale some MORON was so bad at shooting they hit the flourescent lights down range.......
with shards of glass raining down.....this was an obvious keyboard commando.....
#4) Last week the best part was watching a guy blow thru 250 rds of 40SW and he hit everything but the center of his target.

The list goes on! Nothing that others have not seen or experienced!
 
We start shooting at the 20 yard range on pistols. These guys friends shared friend 2's pistol, a 9mm S&W.
Friend 1 will not shut up laughing at friend 2's shooting,which really sucked. Aggravates the living hell out of him. All of a sudden, with a fresh mag, friend 2 takes friend 1's crutches, throws them downrange and starts shooting at them.
The cars are parked right behind us, and Friend 2 then puts 3 rounds in the hood of friend 1's car, emptying the clip, shattering windshield, etc.
Friend 2 then puts his gun in his belt, and grabs his stuff while we start yelling.
He tells us to stuff it (lots of cussing), he can do what he wants as he is a cop now. Gets in his car, and drives off.
Click to expand...

Wow, that sounds pretty scary. I think I would have been seeking cover (or fleeing, if possible), ready to deploy my own weapon. This was one reason why I got my CCW ... I just leave the weapon holstered, hidden and ready, God forbid I ever need it.

---

These are not ones I've witnessed, but some of the gems I've heard from friends:

1. A guy sighting a Glock by holding it just an inch or so from his face; my friend, stunned by what he was seeing, was unable to get words out before said moron pulled the trigger ... he heard it took 19 stitches to sew up the damage it caused ... luckily he didn't lose his eye.

2. Lady with a 380, holding it up in the air pulling the trigger saying "It won't shoot" ... bang, a hole appears in the roof above the firing line

More stuff that I've seen:

1. At an indoor range my wife fired her first shot from my S&W 642. She flinched so badly on her second shot that she threw the round into the ceiling, 15' downrange

2. A good friend of mine, fiddling with his jammed 22 pistol with his finger in the trigger, fired a round into the same ceiling before I could say anything

3. Spray 'N Pray: seen plenty of times, the most riduculous was a guy who dumped an entire 33 round magazine from a Glock 19 at 7 yds ... and hit the paper maybe 3 to 5 times (probably a 2' x 3' target).
 
Dumbest thing I ever did on the range was to tell my Gramps his age was affecting his eyesight after I outscored him at fifty meters. He put a fresh clip in the M1 and put seven rounds into the 9 and 10 ring with rapid fire. I put down my rifle and shut my mouth, which is the smartest thing I ever did on the range.

The moral is: never tease a WWII vet about marksmanship when he is teaching you riflecraft.
 
Fifteen+1, so was his finger in the trigger guard when he racked the slide? I'm guessing he also racked it holding onto the muzzle too.

Glad he's ok -- just curious what exactly went wrong.
Click to expand...

He says that he didn't. What he did was hold the pistol in his right hand, and took left hand and put it on top of slide with his pinky finger closest to the barrel. He claims that the firing pin didn't reset. Basically it stayed in the forward firing position. But this doesn't make any since because to get a round in the chamber you would have to cycle it all the way back putting the pin in the rearward position. Its an XD and I am about 10 shades of confused on how the heck he was able to do this. I think his finger was on the trigger.
 
Everytime I think I've seen everything, somebody proves me wrong. I went to the range today, figuring (correctly) that everybody else would be watching the Super Bowl. There was ONE other guy on the range, firing an AR, plus the RO/store cashier, and a few people who drifted in and out of the store area. I was packing up, and the RO was hanging around talking with the other guy. The other guy asks the RO if he can run out his last mag rapid-fire, and the RO agrees after checking the line. So the guy puts his 30 down just as fast as I've ever seen a semi-auto fired, drops his mag, then sets the rifle on the bench. He turns and runs his target back, and we were all admiring it (all 30 in the body silhouette, most of them 9 and 10) when the RO starts sniffing and asks, "Anyone else smell plastic burning?" We look around, and there is smoke coming from the bench! It turns out that the ARs barrel had been right on top of one of those foam plastic blocks that they use for holding pistol ammo, and had MELTED into it. Fortunately it was empty.

Not stupid I guess, it's not really something you would expect to have to worry about.
 
Well the dumbest thing I have seen happened yesterday whle I was at the range with my 11yr old daughter and a friend from Houston. While shooting there was a gentlman testing out some of his handloads and shooting through a chronograph. So the line is hot but its just us and this guy. We are pretty far apart and my daughter is taking her turn with the AR. I look over at are nieghbor shooter and his chronograph blew over and he is out there getting ready to pick it up. I immeidately stop my kid from shoting. Now with our point of aim it would have been impossible to hit him but you just don't walk on to the range with out notifying people and making sure we can go cold. So I let hm know hey if you need to go out there just let us know we'll either finish the mag that we are shooting or go cold right then. Nobody else is here just say something. So he agrees and we move past it. After another hour or so we are still just the two of us him and our small group. So he is setting up a different gun to shoot so I ask if we can go cold and walk out to take a look at our targets, and says fine. As we are walking back I notice that his gun is all set up on sandbags and he looking through his scope, but I'll also notice that his bolt was open. Just gave me the creeps. So we pick up our step a little bit and as soon as we cross back over the line he closes the bolt and fires before we can get our hearing protection on. Now I am pissed. So I tell him hey come on have some respect what you did looking through your scope is bad enough but at least let us put the ear muffs back on before you just start shooting. He gets a little cranky and packs up and leaves. The end.
 
High school, hunter safety course. Don't know who the guy was with. Anyway, we file into the classroom he has a dozen rifles laid out. He begins with the 4 rules of firearm safety. As he demonstrates that the first gun is empty - hey, a round in the chamber. "That one is a little dirty" and lays it aside. The next firearm too. ALL of the guns he brought for us to see and handle were fully loaded.
 
Dunno where you grew up but when my buddies & I went hunting beaver we didn't need no firearms hey.
Click to expand...
...lol; so when are you taking me hunting, heard you have some big beavers in your neck of the woods...thinking about getting a .458 Lott in hopes that someday I can afford to use it. :D
 
Last edited:
I haven't seen anything too terrible yet. Most no-no's have involved people showing up without hearing protection and then getting angry when guns go off. One guy emptied a pistol after we went cold once, thankfully nobody was out there. And one guy who'd obviously never shot before emptied a Glock before we went hot, again thankfully no one was down range.
 
Hey Greenr18, dumbest thing I have seen and done is show up at an outdoor range in Vermont in mid-winter. Keeps the barrel cool! Did it get above freezing yet this year in your parts? Not here. Lot's of pow and no ice so I'm happy!
 
Not at the range, but a friend of the family loaned a gun to another (air-headed) friend of the family.

She felt she needed it for protection as someone in her life had been making threats.

Anyway, she decided she should try it out in her back yard IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CITY!

The police ALLMOST seized the gun, luckily they were able to talk their way out of it.

He took it back ASAP.
 
video from kenyan exercise new 2nd LT sent out to clear elephants from range .
walk up to elephants waving hands shouting shoo no obvious effect.
Hero draws browning pistol fires into air retreats at speed pursured by furious elephants:D
 
Not a range story, but scary, nonetheless...

Last year, we had a natural gas pipeline being laid through the area. A bunch of the pipeline workers (all from Texas, apparently) rented a house down the road from my place.

Middle of the night, drunk as hoot owls, they decide they want to go shooting. Next thing you know, a pack of them are on the roof of their house shooting at road signs. Now mind you, this is in the middle of a residential area. They are shooting over the roof of the next house at road signs down the block, lit up by street lights.

Sounds like WW3, local SWAT is called out, a bunch of pipeline workers went to jail. Amazingly, no one hurt, no other houses even hit, due mostly to the proximity of the houses to open range land that bordered the neighborhood.
 
not stupid but lazy machine gun shoot set light to the berm with tracers.
quick decsion sunday lunchtime walk 1200 metres across marsh to berm to put out fire. or clear off sharpish :D
to be fair berm was between sea and marsh so no threat to anything
 
Saw a gentlemen that was shooting a brand spanking new .300 weatherby mag. His shots were going all over the place and he asked for some help. I was working as one of the RSO's. I walked over and saw that he had a .300 weatherby but was shooting .300 win mag shells. I told him to stop fireing before he really screwed his gun up. He cursed me as a moron and said this is what the guy at the gun shop give me. I tried to explain the diffrence and even offered to by the remaining shells and for him to go buy the right shells. He would have none of it. So we asked the man to leave the range.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

W
  • Locked
Dumbest thing heard at the range this weekend
Replies
20
Views
2K
goon
G
A
  • Locked
Weirdest tactical junk gun you've seen, or photos?
2 3
Replies
61
Views
6K
david_the_greek
D
C
  • Locked
The dumbest thing you ever saw anybody do with a gun
Replies
10
Views
692
Larry Ashcraft
Larry Ashcraft
B
  • Locked
Gun shop and range idiocy
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Replies
183
Views
19K
hemiram
hemiram
CZ 75 BD
  • Locked
Dumb, dumber, and dumbest...
Replies
2
Views
822
pax
P
Back
Top