I've had some interesting times at the local range, to include a guy dropping dead while talking to the wife mid sentence, but yesterday was a cautionary tale I thought worth sharing.
Sitting down on the end of the range minding my own frustrated with groups as usual and three guys show up, start plinking away with an AR-10, way to fast to be consistent but they are having fun. I notice they are shooting reloads and are rotating off on the rifle, so they look like they know what they are doing. First cold range and they start playing with guns on the bench and the RSO's descend quickly and square them away. Enough to raise an eyebrow but not enough to clear out for me anyway. Little time goes by and they swap rifles, and bring out a new falling block rifle that sounds a little LOUD and looks spanking new. Cold range comes around and I hear them discussing problems with their primers, get a closer look and see a primer cratered around the firing pin, with a perfect negative of the firing pin hole sticking out of the rear of the spent shell. Inquiring about load data and mentioning the fireball that's coming out the front I decide it's time to leave the range after politely advising them to maybe start with a ladder load or something that may not result in rapid disassembly of the rifle,,, insert 50 cal slap round video here. To their credit they heeded the advice and ceased firing that rifle and decided to pull the rounds apart later.
I've never really worried about others on the range save the true newbies to either a range or weapons in general, but this makes me think twice about going to public ranges.
Sitting down on the end of the range minding my own frustrated with groups as usual and three guys show up, start plinking away with an AR-10, way to fast to be consistent but they are having fun. I notice they are shooting reloads and are rotating off on the rifle, so they look like they know what they are doing. First cold range and they start playing with guns on the bench and the RSO's descend quickly and square them away. Enough to raise an eyebrow but not enough to clear out for me anyway. Little time goes by and they swap rifles, and bring out a new falling block rifle that sounds a little LOUD and looks spanking new. Cold range comes around and I hear them discussing problems with their primers, get a closer look and see a primer cratered around the firing pin, with a perfect negative of the firing pin hole sticking out of the rear of the spent shell. Inquiring about load data and mentioning the fireball that's coming out the front I decide it's time to leave the range after politely advising them to maybe start with a ladder load or something that may not result in rapid disassembly of the rifle,,, insert 50 cal slap round video here. To their credit they heeded the advice and ceased firing that rifle and decided to pull the rounds apart later.
I've never really worried about others on the range save the true newbies to either a range or weapons in general, but this makes me think twice about going to public ranges.
