via Ry I came across this thread at ARFcom.
I’m at a cease fire at the range and we have a few guys changing their targets.
One guy finished shooting and decided to case his rie and take it to his car, handling it while people are down range.
The rules of the club are if the range is cold no one touches the guns
There is no range officer as this is members only hours. I didn’t say anything to him but am wishing I had politey reminded him of the rules.
What would you have done?
The comments in that thread make me weep. You do not handle firearms during a cease fire. Period, end of discussion. Now how would I react? I have been in that exact situation. Sadly the video of said situation the audio is washed out by the wind. But here is a break down of what happened.
At the high intensity event 2010 the first wave shot their targets and the range was called safe. All rifles were unloaded and shown clear. They were instructed to ground their weapons and let them cool, or case them if they felt their rifles were cool enough to do so. At this point we had everyone step back from their weapons, or walk off with their case. Staff then proceeded to go down range to set up for the second wave of shooters. I stayed behind to talk to Oleg and act as a RSO. While talking to Oleg I see someone pick up an uncased firearm and sweep the staff down range as well as the other shooting line before bringing it vertical. As he started to pick up the weapon I promptly started yelling to put the weapon down. I was very vocal but evidently he couldn’t hear me. He continued and when I finally got on top of him he realized I was yelling at him. He continued to say he hadn’t done anything wrong or against the rules, and then attempted to claim we had given conflicting commands. Except just prior to him shooting he had to recite the following:
- Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction.
- Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot.
- Always keep the gun unloaded until ready to use.
- Always keep the gun in its case unless the muzzle is pointed downrange and within two feet of the shooting line.
So he walked off the shooting line with an uncased rifle. He was handling the weapon during a ceasefire, and in so doing had muzzled a bunch of the staff. I handed the issue over to one of the “jacketed” ROs to deal with because he seemed to think I wasn’t someone he should be listening to.
The bottom line is that the rule of not handling firearms during a cease fire is to ensure that no one is muzzled and that there is a zero possibility of human caused discharge while people are down range. If you’re so impatient that you need to be careless about safety, get the hell off my range and don’t come back. In the incident above, I have not seen even the friends of this individual return. Evidently it did cause a bit of a black eye. You know what would have been worse, just ignoring it.
Safety is a culture and if you don’t cultivate it and make sure people are thinking about it, especially in an event like Boomershoot, the next thing we know the event is no longer happening because someone was careless.
Seriously folks, is this that difficult to understand? For any of those of you who recently started reading my blog, these types of things make me VERY angry.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.