Wear your eye and ear protection!!!

[mykeal]

3. I'm simply advocating that range officers should follow club rules and the law.
That's not far fetched, that's respect for the club rules and recognizing the rights of the individual club member.
If a club has such eye & ear protection rules then all of the members need to abide by it, or don't belong to such a club or don't be a range officer at such a club if it's personally disagreeable to not have such rules.

I believe that your argument is that an RSO must confine his responsibility to written, or otherwise expressed, club rules. At least, that's how I understand it, so correct me if I'm wrong, because that's the crux of the discussion. If he observes activity he personally considers unsafe, but that is not considered by the expressed club rules, he has no authority to take remedial action out of respect for the club and the rights of the individual members. The action that you believe he should take is to take the issue to the club management to obtain the authority, and if it's not proffered, to resign. Is that correct?

I will have to agree on at least this point: if a club or range management refused to support their RSO in enforcement of a basic rule of safety (by which I mean a rule that proscribes activity that is unilaterally acknowledged will certainly result in injury, such as not wearing hearing protection), whether it's written or not, that RSO should not work for that management.

 

[JohnM]

Good grief! I thought this outrageously out of hand thread had faded away.
Now we got the same thing trying to be started again.:banghead:

 

[hso]

Guys, because I can't use the term "gentlemen" for all participants, bickering isn't going to do anyone any good here.

I'm the safety manage for an Operation in my company. There's no question that eye and hearing protection is needed in shooting.

The question of what an RSO's responsibility may be is at it's most fundamental level a question of protecting other shooters on the range from unsafe behavior that another shooter may exhibit that will affect others. IOW, keeping people from being shot.

Professionally and legally within my company I have a requirement to assess hazards, ensure that the people exposed to them are trained in recognizing them and how to protect themselves from them, to provide the equipment needed for them to do that AND to make sure they're using it properly. This is due to regulation, company procedure and my professional ethics.

At a recreational facility there are no laws requiring the use of eye and ear protection, but every credible shooting organization in the world either requires or at least advocates both and of the dozen or so ranges I've been to all of them have posted requirements to use both. While I've never been to a range that didn't require their use as part of their requirements for use of the facility, I suppose there are club or commercial ranges that that may only advocate their use. Considering My KABOOM could affect Your eyes or ears it would be reasonable that a range require use of eye and ear protection since you'd be suffering the injury from someone else's firearm.

Personal opinions on personal responsibility and freedom aside, when you share the range with others you share the hazards they're subject to. Since you don't know whether the guy next to you has a KABOOM in the making you and the range should consider that protecting yourself from the other guy includes their extraordinary eye and ear hazards.

Shooting on private property with no one else around and the issue changes to you and only you. Shoot where you don't have that control and the issue isn't as simple.

 

[4v50 Gary]

Some ranges make it mandatory for shooters to wear eye and ear protection. Others don't. Hence the duties of a range officer may vary according to the rules of the range. A prudent person will take precautions to ensure their own safety. If one feels that others are unsafe, they may bring it to the attention of the range officer who, if (s)he concurs, may either remind the individual or ask him/her to leave. If the complainant is unsatisfied with the outcome, the complainant may leave.

BTW, when I was a rangemaster/firearms instructor, eye and ear protection were mandatory.

This thread has run its course.