Gun safety is no joke. Seriously.
The story of a day at the range / gun safety nightmare
There I was, with 2 hours to kill before the event I was attending started.
I knew where a local gun range was located in that town (I’d been there a couple of times to test-fire guns I was trading for so I knew where it was) so as my thoughts usually do when I am board, they turned to firearms and shooting.
Since it was a lovely fall day, I decided enjoy the great outdoors my favorite way (surrounded by powder smoke) and to pop off a box or two with my carry gun to fill the time (I always carry a complete range kit including targets, ammo, etc).
Spice at a gun range NOT doing stuff like I describe in this article
It was a Saturday afternoon, there were people at every single bench at the 25 and 50 yard ranges… since I pack a .357 Ruger LCR snubby there isn’t that much point in putting up a target at 100 yards away, so I sat there in the car and just watched the folks shoot for a while.
I’m used to seeing people with various degrees of gun safety awareness and training, but this afternoon was about to give me a whole new gun safety training outlook… and not in a good way.
Dysfunctional group in more ways than one…
One group (the one at the far left end beyond whom there was nothing but woods) was obviously a family, two teen boys (guessing 13-16ish), a mom and a dad. Dad was sighting in his deer rifle at 50 yards (no idea why, he was well on the paper but that’s what he was doing), and it was making a heck of a boom (I picked up his brass later, 7mm WinMag). Mom was blazing away with an iron sighted 30-30 Marlin lever gun, and kiddos were popping mags full of Golden Bullet out of a pair of 10/22’s.
The concrete shooting benches all were each covered by a beach towel, and the area is entirely open.
Mother inserts several rounds into her 30-30 and father squeezes off another round. Mother fires & and jacks another round into the chamber, which also cocks the gun. Boys are standing there blazing away.
Father says something to mother, who pulls the gun off of her shoulder and drops it onto bench from about 8 inches up, with the barrel pointed directly at her two sons. She dropped the gun so hard that it bounced.
The gun did not fire.
I just about wet my pants.
So I was sitting there thinking “surely to GOD she had activated the hammer block safety” as they all walked downrange to check their targets. I grabbed my empty pop bottle, got out of my car and walked to the trash can that sits behind the benches. I looked, and could clearly see the “red” part of the safety, and that the hammer was, indeed, fully back and not at half-cock.
It must not have been one of both of those boy’s time to die, because God only knows why that gun didn’t go off.
Now I was struck on the horns of a dilemma, what (if anything) do I say about the obvious breaches in the rules of gun safety? This family was obviously in need of some gun safety training.
They were walking back and the boys were going back to where they would be in front of that loaded gun cocked and locked… so I HAD to say something. Dad kind of nodded at me and I simply said “Excuse me sir, but before those boys step in front of that 30-30 you probably want to engage the safety and decock the hammer…
Dude took one look at the gun, at the position it was pointed, and turned to the wife.
Time for me to fly!
I made my exit. Rather than watch the drama, I went ahead down to the other side of the range and proved that it is actually pretty pointless to shoot a Ruger LCR .357 snubby at a target 100 yards away…
We have a local gun range (private) at the town I live in where my wife and I go all the time… but we never go there if anybody else is there, and we leave if somebody joins us. You just never know about people and their lack of gun safety training & awareness both while at the range and also while cleaning firearms.