What's the worst shooting you're ever seen at the range?

I can't say too much.
Bought my 1st AR about a year ago. 6'' groups @ 50yds. My eyes and iron sights just don't work anymore...lol.

The gentleman who fired a 12 gauge target load into the concrete floor in the club hose at our private range. He thought he'd put a snap cap in the chamber.
4 people injured. Glad I wasn't there at the time.

At the old range at Barnwood Arms, there were a few times when an employee would walk in wearing earmuffs and say "Cease Fire!!!" and then once everyone was quiet would say: "Look, let me explain something...the offices are upstairs. We have rounds hitting the ceiling, and even tho they're plated, the bookkeeper is taking cover on top of the desk and feels like she's in a war zone!!! Please do NOT hit the ceiling!!!!" And then would walk out. An event like that wasn't frequent, but it happened more than it should. And I used to tell new shooters: "It is entirely possible to shoot faster than the gun is capable of, and faster than you can recover from recoil. See all those holes in the ceiling? Those are people who were doing that."

Sauer Grapes said:

I can't say too much.
Bought my 1st AR about a year ago. 6'' groups @ 50yds. My eyes and iron sights just don't work anymore...lol.

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May not be your eyes; I have 1,000 rounds of cheap green-tip PMC knock-off ammo that groups 6" out of my PSA; a little better out of my Daniel Defense. Both shoot .5 MOA with heavier, quality ammo.

As long as "bad" shooting is a first step toward BETTER shooting,
than it is tolerable. After all, we all have to start someplace.

However, one of the greatest ironies of the shooting world is that most gun
owner's are not really interested in learning to shoot well !

It is similar to someone buying a musical instrument, but not wanting to
practice learning how to play it. Or someone buying a piece of exercise
equipment, and not developing the discipline to exercise regularly.

It is always easy to buy the equipment; It is far
more difficult to actually practice.

Because of this, the vast majority gun owners shoot guns for recreational
purposes. They are shooting guns purely for ENTERTAINMENT.

Too many gun owners treat the firing range as if it were a shooting
gallery at the circus; Because, too many gun owners ARE NOT serious shooters !!

Serious shooters want their range time to count for something.

In the world of guns, serious shooters are definitely in the minority.

mooninpisces said:

As long as "bad" shooting is a first step toward BETTER shooting,
than it is tolerable. After all, we all have to start someplace.

However, one of the greatest ironies of the shooting world is that most gun
owner's are not really interested in learning to shoot well !

It is similar to someone buying a musical instrument, but not wanting to
practice learning how to play it. Or someone buying a piece of exercise
equipment, and not developing the discipline to exercise regularly.

It is always easy to buy the equipment; It is far
more difficult to actually practice.

Because of this, the vast majority gun owners shoot guns for recreational
purposes. They are shooting guns purely for ENTERTAINMENT.

Too many gun owners treat the firing range as if it were a shooting
gallery at the circus; Because, too many gun owners ARE NOT serious shooters !!

Serious shooters want their range time to count for something.

In the world of guns, serious shooters are definitely in the minority.

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It's no different than anything else. Check your local Craiglist pretty much anytime except the New Year's resolution rush and look for used sports/exercise equipment. Check a local gym's membership numbers vs regular attendees. How many musical instruments sit around in spare rooms, attics, basements. How many male gym goers have free weight barbell back squat 315+ lbs to proper depth ever in their lives? Probably about as many as could clear a pistol dot drill at 3 yards

Maybe not the worst shooting, but definitely a "synaptic misfire." My buddy Mike and I were fiddling with our varmint rifles on the 200 yd range. Only for some (stupid) reason we were thinking 100 yds. I could give lots of excuses for the error but I won't bore you - they're feeble excuses anyhow.

Hmmm.... why are we shooting low? Thought we were dialed in a bit high at 100. Both of us were shooting low. This would have been the time for simultaneous face-palms, but nooooo... Brimming with intelligence, Mike whipped out his new rangefinder - a cheapy. It read (drumroll...) 200 yds give or take.

Now you'd think we'd figure things out. But nooo.... Rangefinder must be defective. It's a cheapy and never been used before. So we took a few more shots. Still low.

Starting to collect some of the marbles we'd lost, we decided to pace off the distance. Halfway there, we got to 100 yd. Only then did it occur to us it had taken a bit of a longer walk than usual when we placed our targets. :banghead:

True story. Embarrassing. And since for us alcohol only happens >after< shooting, we were totally sober.

lpsharp88 said:

I anticipated the recoil and made my muzzle dive a little bit before the shot broke.

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That's a polite way to say you flinched.

The worst shooting I ever saw was on an artillery range in Grafenwoehr Germany. A Second Lieutenant (need I say more?) misread a map and dropped an 8 inch round 3 THOUSAND meters off target in the middle of an M60 range.

I rotated out shortly there after but I'm sure it was career ending for him

At the local police range, now closed to the public, I was playing around with my new target 22 at 25 yards. A couple of lanes to my right were a couple of the local patrolman practicing for their annual qualification. These guys were shooting at 3 to 7 yards and having trouble on a full sized silhouette target. The one that has the 'bad guy' pointing a gun at you.
When I brought my target back to check there were a couple of 38 sized holes on the lower right of mine. There were only the three of us shooting that day.
I wonder if they qualified?

Unfortunately At a CCW class the guy was a new shooter he was all excited about his Glock .. Well turned out he got it from a good friend > COP < took it home loaded it up out in the garage as soon as he got home then shot the garage . OOPs at the range he followed every safety rule .. he missed a big target at 7 yards He hit the paper a few times but never on target .. The instructor took him aside for extra help .. I offered to tutor him but the instructor felt he needed to do that himself .. AND this newbie was the second worst shot he had ever had in 4 years of giving CCW classes .. The worst was in law enforcement..

A couple of years ago I was at an indoor range in South Houston. I was in the next to last lane and a young man was in the last lane with his girlfriend. He was teaching her how to shoot a .45 ACP pistol. He was doing mag dumps and managing to shoot the wall, ceiling, floor and my target in the next lane. I moved my target a few times to throw off his aim but decided to leave after he shot my target holder and I got hit with a little splatter. I complained to the Range Officer who asked the guy to leave. The Range Officer said that he was just about to talk to the guy after seeing him shoot up the ceiling and walls but the hit on the target holder was
enough to get the guy shown to the door.

I seem to regularly see people shooting 6" groups at 50' with scoped high power rifles.

I was once shooting my friend's Browning Hi Power. The darn thing went full auto on me. I put the first shot where I had intended it to go, the next two rounds above where I wanted them to go, but still on the paper, and then the remaining ten rounds in the ceiling. We were promptly asked to vacate the premises. He later had a new sear installed and sold it.

WOW! Some of these stories are almost unbelievable! Hilarious!

Reminded of this thread earlier today, also reminded why I avoid the public range. I rarely go, but incorrectly assumed it wouldn't be busy being Tuesday. I needed to function test a new AR lower before letting the ATF know I was going to register it as an SBR.

After I was confident my new BCM was functional, not that I had any doubts, I decided to go down to the pistol range and shoot a little pistol.

The guy next to be was teaching his son to shoot his HK pistol. Dad started and after a mag handed the pistol to his son with a fresh mag. I was about to shoot a few more rounds when something told me to look over.

Dad is standing behind his son and not paying any attention. The son has his right hand gripping the gun well enough, but the support hand is supporting the HK so far forward on the frame that his thumb and index finger were dangerously close to the business end of things.

I pointed at him, "he's gonna hurt himself!" and dad caught him before he squeezed off a round. I packed up and left.

Someone pulled up just in time to see me miss a huge target stapled to a few feet of cardboard with 3 clips from totally shot out Argentine Mauser at less than 15 yards. That gun was in dangerous shape and I didn't know any better.

I keep waiting for someone here to describe the guy doing it....

Funny video, but drops the "S" bomb...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=4g5p6b-ZZ5Y

Ft Dix, Winter/Spring 1989.....

My company was often tasked with "running the range" for the battalion or even worse the whole brigade from time to time. Being combat troops we required high marksmanship scores to even stay in the unit or risk transfer after too many failures. One of the tasks involved with running a range is being a range safety. So I saw a good deal of bad shooting and downright unsafe practices.

During one of our train ups for a coming deployment, we secured this detail for a brigade level qualification with both day and night courses. Being a young private at the time, I was pretty nervous being a safety knowing I would have to deal with everyone a week more seniority than me, just about everyone. One senior female NCO became my unit's problem case. She scored 0/40 hits during 4 sequences. A few more tries with some trainers got her to barely passing at 24/40. At night was a whole new ball game. With her on my far right I listened for 3 weapons chambering before settling in my ear plugs. Just before the first target appeared I heard a loud "Um Excuse me" from her area. I shine my light to see she had put her magazine in backwards and had charged a round. It turned out to be a long night to go with a long day.

Besides, the long running average for law enforcement officer involved shootings and private citizens firing in self defense is an 18-20% hit rate. So, typically, about 80% of shots fired miss their target...even for people who are trained and tested and can pass requirements.

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Ya mean like the NYC shootout where LEO fired something like 47 shots and hit the perp ONCE? Gotta love those NY triggers on Glocks

Trunk Monkey said:

The worst shooting I ever saw was on an artillery range in Grafenwoehr Germany. A Second Lieutenant (need I say more?) misread a map and dropped an 8 inch round 3 THOUSAND meters off target in the middle of an M60 range.

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Didn't see this myself but a former colleague grew up in Lawton, OK, right next to Fort Sill.

They do artillery training there. One time they were supposed to shoot NW and got their artillery piece aligned properly . . . but pointed the wrong way.

They dropped a live shell in the city . . . fortunately hitting a huge vacant lot.

Rumor had it the officer in charge was transferred to Alaska or Greenland . . . somewhere nice and cold.

Got to watch out for that "friendly fire" from artillery.

Back in the 70's at the Ft. Lewis/Yakima firing range, I was running the FDC (Fire Direction Control) charts for an 8" artillery company (4 guns). No computers in those days, just charts and protractors. We also had 3 companies of 155's (6 guns each) in our battalion but they had their own FDC.

Two people are required to run the charts. Each person has their own chart. Once one person has called out the firing corrections, the data is not sent to the guns until the second person independently verifies the data and says "check".

I was usually 20-30 seconds ahead of my co-plotter (we'll call him "Zee"). The second lieutenant running the FDC was getting upset and riding Zee's case for being slow. It got to the point where I would call out the corrections, then Zee would just wait a couple of seconds and say "check".

This worked well for several hours. Suddenly we received an emergency battalion cease fire. Someone had dropped rounds into the Yakima river just south of the Roza dam, just north of the town of Yakima (which is well outside the firing range). There were dead fish all over the place.

Our last shot was supposed to have been a 40 mil correction. I looked over at my last plot and noticed that I had moved my azimuth ring 4 big notches (400 mils) instead of 4 little notches (40 mils). Our company had made a 40 degree (400 mil) correction instead of a 4 degree (40 mil) correction, about a 4 mile error. I cleverly used the edge of my thumb to sneak the azimuth ring back to it's correct position.

The range was shut down and there was a big investigation. But we were firing a battalion TOT (all 22 guns fire at once), nobody could say which guns the stray rounds came from.

So if anyone was wondering about all the dead fish in Yakima back in the 70's, now you know why!