[ Most Unsafe Things I've Seen at the Range? ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another "Ask Ian" Q&A on Forgotten Weapons.
I'm Ian McCollum, and our question today comes from Brian on Patreon.
Brian asks, "What is the dumbest or most unsafe thing you've ever witnessed
while out shooting in the desert, or the range or match?"
Well, I've seen my fair share of dumb and unsafe things happen out shooting and at matches.
I've seen a number of pistols fall out of people's holsters, that's kind of the most typical thing.
But when you want to ask about the most unsafe,
it would have to be the closest I ever came to actually getting shot at the range.
So, this happened ... probably it would be about 18 months ago at this point.
This was early in Covid and I was out shooting just in the desert.
I shoot at a spot that is ... state land of the right type that you can legally shoot on,
and there's a big hill that you can shoot into so you've got a really nice backstop.
You'd kind of think that here in Southern Arizona
you could just kind of wander out anywhere in the desert and just go shooting.
And well maybe you could. Legally speaking, it's a lot more complicated than that.
We have a bunch of different types of government land,
some state, some federal, some park, some not park, as well as private property.
You can shoot on private property, but if you want to shoot on public property
it has to be the right type of public property.
It has to be a certain distance from roads or occupied buildings, and of course you need a backstop.
And so there are only a few places that really work and meet all those criteria.
And there's a common popular one that I use most of the time, you've seen it in my videos.
Well, my wife and I were out shooting,
this was partially to do a little bit of filming, and partially we were just out having fun shooting.
And I've heard ricochets a lot, like I'm used to hearing ricochets.
I know what that sounds like and I heard something that sounded kind of like a ricochet,
but it also kind of sounded like a bullet going a little closer to me.
Like this wasn't the sort of "pewww" off in the distance ricochet, this sounded closer.
And OK, that's odd. But whatever, OK.
And then ... over the course of 5 or 10 seconds apart I heard two thwacks.
And I actually saw the second one, and they were bullets impacting the range
where my wife and I were shooting, not that far from us.
The ... one that I saw was probably 15 yards away, 15 metres away.
So it's like it didn't actually hit us, but that's really uncomfortable.
And at this point I realised, for some reason,
there are bullets incoming directly at our shooting spot.
Now the way the shooting range works at this place is that it's this big hill.
And there are, they're not formal - they've not been like actually built up by anybody,
but there are standard shooting positions that are pretty obvious
that have been sort of worn into effect by many, many people using them for many years.
And they're basically just all radial around ... the circumference of this hill.
So you find a spot that's nice and clear, and you shoot into the hillside.
And we were shooting into the hillside, and these rounds were coming in perpendicular to us.
So at this point I'm actually really happy to say that I didn't panic or freak out.
I suggested to my wife, briskly, that we leave everything right where it was,
get in the car and leave.
So yeah, we left a shooting mat, we had a couple of guns out that we were using.
I just left them right there on the ground, we got in the car,
drove back out to sort of the road that connects all of the shooting spots.
And what may have been in retrospect a dumb idea,
but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do was
we went and drove in the direction that the shots had been coming from
to try and figure out what was going on.
Not straight in line with the gunfire, but like you come back out away from the hill,
and then there's a circumferential road around it.
So ... I found where they were coming from.
There was an older couple out at the range, and I mentioned at the beginning this was early in Covid,
I'm pretty sure that this was a couple that were brand new gun owners
that had went and purchased a handgun because they were worried.
And then they came out to this shooting spot to test fire it, to learn how to use it.
And what they had done was set up a paper target not like into the hillside,
but they'd gone 90 degrees,
and they just set it so they were shooting kind of parallel to the hillside.
As far as I can tell, simply out of a total lack of understanding of how gun safety works,
or etiquette at a shooting range like this.
And so ... there's them, and then their target,
and then probably ... 100 yards beyond that is where my shooting position had been.
And there was a bunch of brush in between so they couldn't see me,
they couldn't see where I was shooting.
But they were essentially shooting without knowing their backstop,
which is one of the four fundamental rules of firearm safety.
So we pulled up there and got out of the car, and ...
it was pretty clear to me what had been going on.
Because I could see what direction the target was and where we were relative.
And I asked them rather politely if they would consider
perhaps moving the target so that it was into the backstop.
And their reaction was kind of like, "What? Oh. Ah, OK I guess."
And they moved the target and that was the end of it.
So a little anticlimactic. But boy, that was definitely
the most uncomfortable, unsafe thing that I've ever witnessed at a shooting range.
... I've never seen anything like that happen
at formal official shooting ranges, public or private.
I've seen people shooting while other people are downrange,
but not actually shooting at them, shooting parallel to them.
So that's that story.
I guess there's one other good one I can share with you and that was at a match.
And I will leave this anonymous, ... protecting the guilty in this case.
It was someone who had set up a match, it was a two-person match.
So there was a head-to-head element [to the] match.
And the person who had set this up had done so without putting a ton of thought into it.
And they set up a stage where you had one long bay, I think it was a 100 yard bay.
And there was a target at the end and ... two series of traffic cones going down in two lines.
And you and the person you were shooting against,
... you started at the first cone, and you each had to hit the target.
And then I don't remember if there was an intermediate thing you had to do,
but it was basically hit the target from the first cone and then you advance to the second,
and the third, and the fourth, and whoever makes their hit from the last cone first wins the stage.
Well, the problem was ... as long as both shooters were relatively equal in skill
this wasn't a big deal because the two shooters were very close to each other
as they went down the bay.
The problem was if one person wasn't very skilled,
then the other shooter gets way ahead of them.
And then you have a situation that is literally the idea of
someone else is downrange and you're shooting at targets.
And your bullets are going to be going right past them, which is horrifically unsafe.
And that was actually a set up at a match that I saw once.
So, that's the most unsafe formally planned thing that I've ever seen at a range or at a match.
Anyway. I don't know, I hope you guys enjoyed this one.
... Hopefully this is well beyond most people's experience.
I ... know for a fact that most shooting range behaviour is very safe,
because these are really exceptional cases that I've seen in the course of
quite a lot of time spent on shooting ranges and shooting spots just out in the desert.
Anyway, if you'd like to have one of your questions answered in a video format like this,
head over to Utreon or Patreon.
I have threads on both platforms set up each month to solicit questions like this.
And of course you'll have the great pleasure of knowing
that you are helping to keep Forgotten Weapons alive.
Thanks for watching.