Required to wear cap at gun range.

At tho local indoor range here, baseball caps are recommended but not required. I wear one when shooting my 1911, if my grip is a little off it will spit empties at my forehead.

My buddy also had a spent case bounce off of the wall and land between his glasses and his eyelid, which caused a pretty good burn mark.
This has taught me to get glasses that fit my face very well - ie: no gaps for hot brass to sneak into.

If it's for safety, then ban anything dangerous, like ammo. You know that stuff is hazardous.

How inane.

When the new nomex uniforms arrive, they'll require you to wear one of them, too...

There seem to be a lot of people here who keep saying "that's so stupid. What are the odds of that happening?". While the other half of the thread is people saying "yup. I've had a hot case land on my eye and burn me".

People who get suddenly burned have a tendency to do crazy things. Like claw at the burning metal to get it off. Doing that with gun in your hand is a recipe for disaster. I'm glad it's never happened to you but obviously it happens enough for a lot of people here to have experienced it. And you might be cool hand Luke when it happens to you but the average shooting public isn't.

I'm sure there's a lot of people who thinking shooting glasses are stupid and a pain in the butt. There are also people who think speed limits and motorcycle helmets are stupid.

I personally don't consider the wearing of a hat to be an unreasonable requirement. That's me. By all means if you thinking it's too onerous then you should leave and go shoot elsewhere. I just think that a hat requirement is a pretty minor quibble.

My personal experience is that you will get brass down your shirt 100 times as much as getting it in your glasses. If they don't require you to wear a turtleneck or dickie, then the hat thing doesn't seem that important, they are just trying to make someone feel better, be it a manager or insurance company.

Open your own range and make whatever rules you want, otherwise buck it up and follow the rules.
Won't be long and you will have to wear a Nomex shirt, hard hat and steel toed boots and shoot no lead rounds.

I have seen the face and eye burns happen on more than one occasion when hot shell casing falls behind safety glasses lens and lodges behind it.

Dont blame the range for "stupid rules". Blame the lawyers, courts and juries for frivolous lawsuits and ridiculous multi-million dollar judgements for injuries. Remember the lawsuit against McDonalds because someone burned their leg spilling coffee on themselves......becaause the coffee was hot !!!. No d-uh !!!

Remember the lawsuit against McDonalds because someone burned their leg spilling coffee on themselves......becaause the coffee was hot !!!. No d-uh !!!

Click to expand...

Ironic you should quote that. If you looked into the case you'd be surprised.

The coffee was hot enough to cause third degree burns wherever it touched. Through fabric. That's a bit hotter than your average run of the mill coffee. Just a bit.

As for the fact that supposedly lawyers impose the football helmet, groin protector, reflective vest, one shot per 20 seconds, no guns within ten miles of the firing line, no live ammo, turtleneck, and flameretardant suit and steel toe shoes ... I'm not entirely sure I buy that, as most of the ranges I go to only have the eye and ear safety rule and they're not sued out of business yet.

Yep, it's not the inconvenience of hot brass on skin contact, it's that most people aren't trained to not flinch when it happens.

I have a bit of a soldering background as well as some metallurgy. What I learned from it was if I ever get metal splash on me, to stay calm regardless of the pain, and perform immediate first aid techniques, then get my butt to the in-plant clinic or to an ER (if severe). I really think more poeple need to learn when pain happens to stay calm...I wish there was a way to teach this to all people.

Provided I also wear prescription safety glasses wtih removable side-shields (and put the shields on for range use), so all that ever happens is hot brass gets on my eyebrow or the bridge of my nose. In which case, I just take my weak hand and flick the brass off my face.

Many people need to get proper range gear, it would make the hat obsolete for the most part. Most ranges don't even know about the side-shields thing, which is sad...there's moldable generic side-shields that can be had for $10 that can be made to fit almost any frame.