So we've had the rudest incident at a range, what's the most dangerous that you've seen

At an MOD site walking to the canteen. MOD Plod Range Rover pulls up into the layby just ahead. Officer gets out, shoulders rifle, leans back into RR to get something else. Rifle slips off their shoulder and starts swinging from their elbow. No matter which direction I dodged it seemed to follow me. When I "commented" they said "It's OK. It isn't loaded." Should have filled in the paperwork and reported them but I was too shocked.
 
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Old Ironsights said:
There are some truly chilling stories here.

I hope to visit the UK next year (assuming some sort of global normality returns) and will be spending time near Cambridge. (Where my wife now lives - you made her an offer she couldn't refuse! We are 'separated' by distance only I will add.) Closer to the trip I was going to ask if people knew of ranges near Cambridge that welcome casual visitors. Now I will add '...and are safe'!

Less frivilously, do we need a thread on 'What has been your best experience at a range?' to balance things and perhaps uplift us a bit? I won't start it as I've only been to a range once. It was a great experience, and I hope to get back there at some time. So I guess it was my best experience too!
Cheers.
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For a 'complete' open range there's "Cambridge Gun Club" in Cottenham, it's a full time CPSA shotgun site but also has ranges for air, smallbore and powderburners at the least;

The Cambridge Gun Club – Clay, Rifle and Practical shooting range Cambridge

cambridgegunclub.co.uk cambridgegunclub.co.uk

They have a plinking area for airguns and on the 4th Saturday of the month hold an open HFT shoot.

Otherwise there's "Cambridge HFT" in Shepreth were we have a larger plinking range and host HFT shoots on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. I'd have to check gun hire at Cottenham, but on shoot days we have rifles available at Shepreth to either spend the day just plinking or having a go at the comps.
 
Mrs. H said:
For a 'complete' open range there's "Cambridge Gun Club" in Cottenham, it's a full time CPSA shotgun site but also has ranges for air, smallbore and powderburners at the least;

The Cambridge Gun Club – Clay, Rifle and Practical shooting range Cambridge

cambridgegunclub.co.uk cambridgegunclub.co.uk

They have a plinking area for airguns and on the 4th Saturday of the month hold an open HFT shoot.

Otherwise there's "Cambridge HFT" in Shepreth were we have a larger plinking range and host HFT shoots on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. I'd have to check gun hire at Cottenham, but on shoot days we have rifles available at Shepreth to either spend the day just plinking or having a go at the comps.
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Thank you very much @Mrs. H. I will make a note of both. Cheers.
 
Randomone said:
If you want to retain them untainted, stay in the Fens. :ROFLMAO: A day walking abroad in Birmingham now will endanger you more than every post in this thread combined.
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There were some pretty rough areas back then, but I have heard things have changed. Places do, usually slowly, but when you come back after a decade or more they all hit you at once.
 
Seen a guy looking at a new handgun point it at his friend and pull the trigger to dry fire. He was told to leave.

Seen a guy at a range have his handgun jam. Starts banging it on the counter muzzle up.

Another handgun with a guy who wouldn’t keep his finger off the trigger even after several warnings. He kept saying he knows what he’s doing. ND about an inch from his own foot.

Only rifle one was in a store with a guy who picked an AR and proceeded to muzzle sweep the entire store looking down it.
 
This is slightly different but was a ND, My dad's lifelong friend of 75 years sadly neither of them still with us was in Malaya on national service. They were on patrol and had camped for the night, the soldiers were split into 2 camps, he told me a soldier in his camp was cleaning the Bren when it suddenly fired, the bullet went through their camp into the other camp and killed a poor soldier.
 
I've had guns pointed at me a few times over the last five years but mainly by the same two people more than once, neither at ranges.

One actually managed to do it twice in his back garden but failed in later sweeps due to me staying close enough to get my hand on his gun before he could get me in the arc.

The other nobber was my ex brother in law, who is, by unanimous verdict of the rest of the family - except my weird sister - and just about everyone else who ever meets him, a complete w⚓ by any and every definition.He's not just stupid, he's also an obnoxious PITA.
Anyway, he has fad interets that he dives into, spends quite a lot of money on, novelty wears off and he's on to something else. For a while shooting was a fad and two weeks running the shitwit pointed a gun at me - not deliberately, he's just an idiot.

First response to me upbraiding him? "It's alright. it's not loaded". Following week, "It's alright. The safety's on". Get the picture of what this waste of organic compounds is?

One time at a range jumps to mind but it's a trap easy to fall into. What made it sort of dangerous was the stupidity of the response. It was a guy in one of the shed shooting a P15 and there's folks out there who have shot bits of their vehicles doing what he was about to do. He was lining up a shot through the scope at a target downrange and he was shooting off at 11 o’clock, rather than straight downrange. My mate who runs the place was standing to his right and I was to his left, obviously both of us at five and seven o''clock positions.

My mate suddenly says, "Hold up, you're going to shoot the pole", the pole being one of the shed supports. Which isn't what made him an idiot, as I said, a lot of people have done something similar. What made him an idiot was his, "No I won't" response and staying in position. Homer face palm
I said,"Don't take that shot", stepped behind him and said, "Mate, I'm standing right behind you and above you, looking down along your gun and to what's in front of it and I can guarantee you 100% you are about to shoot that pole like you've just been told."
Then he doubled down on stupid by looking put out at not being allowed to send his pellet ricocheting at best outwards or at worst back into the shed very possibly hitting himself or, even worse, someone else.
 
2nd hand one about a soldier who, on returning his pistol to the armoury, racked the slide, visually checked no round in the chamber, let the slide return and THEN removed the mag. The function check into the clearing barrel was a lot louder than anticipated. There's a reason checklists are written in a particular order.
 
BigSid61 said:
2nd hand one about a soldier who, on returning his pistol to the armoury, racked the slide, visually checked no round in the chamber, let the slide return and THEN removed the mag. The function check into the clearing barrel was a lot louder than anticipated. There's a reason checklists are written in a particular order.
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If we are doing second hand. A guy I worked with was ex royal marine. He was driving onto an army barracks in Ireland in the 90s. Back then he had a sidearm tucked for appendix carry but the navy didn’t give him the kydex holsters we all know and love now. Just tucked into his jeans (you didn’t want to wear uniform in Ireland at the time). Pulling it out and bang through his leg and into the engine block of the car.

Turns out army take an ND more seriously than the navy. So he ended up locked up for a few hours until someone came and let him out.

Walked with a limp still 20 years later.
 
zogg364 said:
Sent a shiver through me just typing it, also reminded me that the odd person used to show up to the range with their kit bags but the pistol in a shoulder holster cocked and locked

It seemed to be accepted or at the very least not frowned upon by the clubs committee who certainly knew about it
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During the pre-ban pistol shooting days one of the ex-military range instructors got sacked on the spot for rocking up next to the club owner at the urinals with a hot browning hi-power holstered. The owner made him drop the magazine there and then, saw the live 9mm rounds and sacked him on the spot!! I was mid-lesson and got told that was it for the day!! 😳😳
 
PistolDan said:
During the pre-ban pistol shooting days one of the ex-military range instructors got sacked on the spot for rocking up next to the club owner at the urinals with a hot browning hi-power holstered. The owner made him drop the magazine there and then, saw the live 9mm rounds and sacked him on the spot!! I was mid-lesson and got told that was it for the day!! 😳😳
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Any misdemeanors at my old pistol club were met with a proper bollocking and a week (or more) holiday - 9 years as a member and i only saw it on a couple of occasions, the management were safety fanatics, which is how it should be on any range.
 
My cousin sports a second belly button because he took a loaded Crosman 1322 of his younger brother and twirled it around his index finger shooting himself in the belly. Pellet popped right out when he squeezed. Needless to say he wasn’t allowed anywhere near our airguns when we were shooting for a looooong time after that 👀
 
When my dad was a kid his uncle used to allow him to borrow his Remington .22 SLR. and use it down the old quarry (turned landfil site). At that time there was a very clear blue water pond in the quarry due to the limestone etc and some kind of little island in the middle on which some rubbish cans had washed up. Dad said he once repeatedly shot at the cans on the island not realising the bullets were richocheting to the other end of the quarry where binmen were offloading their rubbish truck. Lots of shouting for him to stop shooting and he got a stern telling off from the binmen.

I've been threatened by a drunk bloke pointing a loaded powerful crossbow at me, I was a DJ (as a 2nd job) for over 20 years, one night I came out the back door of a club and saw this bloke intentionaly snap the electric aerial off my Vauxhall Senator. I was a big lad and told him he'd better pay for that or else, which is when he opened his (or his mates van) and pulled out this crossbow. Reported that one to police.

As a kid I used to go shooting around the old settling ponds of the local sewage works, lots of waste land around there, we went after rats, rabbits and old bottles (the site used to be a dump so plenty old bottles). One day I was approaching the site and could see there were people already in the area clay shooting with shotguns, the wind was in my direction from them and I could make out that one of them was planning scaring me off, I wouldn't have been in their way but they must have wanted the whole place to themselves. This bloke intentionbally shot in my direction several times, I could hear the shot go past my head and through the nettles and I could hear them all laughing. They had arrived in a Rangerover and I modified it's rear lights with my air rifle after skirting around the perimeter to get past them.

As a kid I had a few mates around playing computer games in my bedroom, my air rifle in one of my cupboards. Unknown to me one of my mates thought it'd be funny to bite off a piece of a rubber pencil eraser, load it into my airgun and shoot another mate thinking that being rubber it'd just bounce off. It didn't just bounce off, it went through the mates jeans and embeded in his leg.

As a kid I once shot an old car battery, the place it hit the battery must've had just the wrong consistency because the pellet bounced straight back and hit me right between the eyes at the bridge of my nose, it cut me and the pellet was still stuck to my head before I pulled it off.

As a kid I was out with a mate on the fringes of this old rubbish tip where there was an old electric pole, no wires connected to it but the pot insulators were still on it. Mate said see if you can shoot that insulator, I did and the pellet came back with the usual richochet sound in our direction but missed us by quite a distance. We both laughed but I said we'd better not shoot that again. He did shoot it again and this time the pellet came straight back and cut the side of his neck.
 
In the same bell target leagur as previous 2 things spring to mind

Wally decided to shoot at the target with steel BB. No injury, but much ducking and swearing.

At one very small pub you shot across the bar into the snug, resulting in no one being served guinnes or lager for the duration of the match.
 
We were on the range at Bisley But 0 the other RCO found one of the probation members loading a rifle magazine on the rifle behind the firing point. Sometimes it’s like herding cats trying to get some people to be safe on the range.
 
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