Shooting Accident

[Double Naught Spy]

The whole building is downrange; it's a free fire zone. I wouldn't want to be standing up on the catwalk unless I was sure the guy flinging lead sees me.

Obviously, that was the problem. The shooter saw the guy on the catwalk, ascertained that he was a target, and shot him!

If that's the case, why can't they have a glass ceiling? I am having trouble visualising a 360 degree range where there can't be glass between the trainee and the observer.

If you are going to have people on the catwalk on a 360 degree range with live fire of real ammunition, the "glass" ceiling sounds like a good idea. The problem is that it would quickly become speckled from splatter and/or errant rounds and eventually lose its transparency. Then you have a very expensive skylight. As noted, it would be very expensive.

 

[Jumping Frog]

VIDEO CAMERAS....don't bleed or sue (if they survive). Catwalks during live fire with human observers= STUPID

Gunsite is complicit here. No other way to look at it and the practice has or will stop now that there has been an "incident".

You can get an 8 channel recorder and cameras at Walmart for under a grand.

Gunsite could put 5 cameras in every room and it would still be less money than they will pay their lawyers to open a new case file and get started for this incident.

 

[grain]

I don't get this, "As the student prepared to
engage the next target, he noticed a black silhouette in his field of view and fired a
round." - Did the guy have no inclination that it could have been a person he was aiming at?

 

[psyopspec]

I'm having a hard time visualizing this.

There was some guy standing DOWNRANGE on some elevated platform?

Am I understanding that correctly?

And we yell at people at the far end of the firing line for reaching two feet in front of the firing line to retrieve spent brass, if they do it while the line is hot?

What is some dope doing up on a catwalk downrange?

Maybe it took 34 years to find somebody that stupid.

I've always been taught that there were four rules that applied in handling a gun. "The downrange rule" or "the 180 rule" isn't one of them. Different ranges and trainers have different rules which they apply to their courses, which is their right within reason. A lawsuit is likely to follow, but I don't believe GS is morally culpable.

 

[Sam1911]

Did the guy have no inclination that it could have been a person he was aiming at?

At first glance you'd say that there's no way a mistake like this could happen. However, a shoot house is a very high-stress, adrenaline-charged environment, especially to someone not terribly familiar with that kind of training. They can put a shooter into a very focused, almost tunnel-visioned mindset, where things become far more "real" than simple paper targets would suggest. The shooter's heart is beating 130 bpm, they can hardly hear anything, they are running on gut-level instinct and whatever vestiges of "training" have made it into their unconscious habits. That is, of course, a large part of the intent of the exercise. While this is a very good thing for training effectively, it is not the safest thing we do with our guns.

Shooters do some very strange things -- make some very questionable, or even illogical decisions -- in shoot houses. Shooters do make mistakes, whether they be in tactics, gun handling, accuracy, and even safety. It is the job of the range designers and staff to make sure that those mistakes don't become accidents like this.

 

[happygeek]

When I got to do a shoot house, we spent a whole day doing dry runs first. This was after we'd spent 4 or 5 days on a flat range doing zeroing, reflexive fire (with rifle and pistol), transition drills [from rifle to sidearm], engaging multiple targets, moving while engaging multiple targets, and shooting from behind cover.

Then we spent the morning running through the shoot house with Sim rounds. After the instructors were satisfied that all the students were competent, we went live in the afternoon. There was no catwalk. The walls had rubber over concrete, the targets were paper silhouettes stapled to target stands that consisted of very thick rubber in front of a steel backstop. The whole contraption was on wheels since it weighed a lot. The instructors moved the targets around a bit between run throughs.

The only spectators were the instructors and they stayed behind the students at all times.

It was good training, fun, and no one got hurt.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

Did the guy have no inclination that it could have been a person he was aiming at?

Well, the targets ARE supposed to look like persons. As Sam noted, people make some strange decisions in shoot houses under that sort of stress, especially when they haven't been through it very much in the past. There is a reason why tactical units seem to run shoot house drills countless numbers of times.

The problem I have with the what happened is twofold. First, the guy on the catwalk was elevationally quite different than the ground level targets. That should have been a clue, but obviously wasn't. The second aspect is part of what is being taught in shoot houses and that is the identification of threats from non-threats. Unless the gun on the catwalk was making like he was pointing a gun at the student in engaged in the drill, the student should have identified the guy on the catwalk as a non-threat and not shot him. However, that is one of the lessons that the students are learning about and so they don't always get it right. You get hostages and non-combatants being shot when they are not supposed to be shot. You sometimes get bad guys that are bypassed because the students misidentify them as non-threats.

 

[Cosmik de Bris]

In these shoot houses are you allowed to point the muzzle over the red line at any time? I'm thinking that some people point the muzzle up during a reload and ADs do happen.

 

[W.E.G.]

I shot the non-threat target at each of the two IDPA matches I attended.

They still let me come to the matches, but I know they watch me closely.

 

[bottom shelf]

They can put a shooter into a very focused, almost tunnel-visioned mindset, where things become far more "real" than simple paper targets would suggest. The shooter's heart is beating 130 bpm, they can hardly hear anything,

And, surprisingly enough, many student forget to keep breathing their first time in the shoothouse. They actually stop breathing, causing a further loss of motor skills and cognative ability.

 

[earlthegoat2]

No charges are expected against the student.

Thank you for waivers.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

In these shoot houses are you allowed to point the muzzle over the red line at any time? I'm thinking that some people point the muzzle up during a reload and ADs do happen.

The RSO should stop students from orienting their guns above the red line, but it often/usually doesn't happen.

That is something I find weird. We get drilled about muzzle control down our throats and many schools teach their students to rotate the gun sideways in the dominant hand and tilt the gun upwards in order to effect a reload. On the outdoor ranges, that puts the muzzle oriented to launch rounds outside of the confines of the range if a gun discharges at that time. You will see students and instructors reload in the exact same manner in the shoot house despite of the red line and common sense. Fortunately, NDs at that time seem to be extremely rare.

This incident, however, wasn't during a reload.

No charges are expected against the student.

Thank you for waivers.

Waviers don't stop criminal charges from being filed. They may stop some lawsuits, but not all and generally only those against the school. Chances are, students did not sign waviers to not hold other students responsible for their actions.

Oh, and like W.E.G., I have shot a non-combatant (paper target of my "neighbor" who was holding a power drill in each hand) and a hostage. I have also managed to shoot a wall next to the head of a target that required ONLY a head shot to be defeated. Each of these improper shots resulted a goodly amount of verbal re-instruction from the RSO.