Dumbest thing you heard/saw in a Gun Store or at the range.

[Logan5]

The wierdest one I ever saw personally: One fine summer afternoon I had taken my new CETME (no brake, no nothing, kind of loud) to the range with some nasty Indian surplus ammo. The only other guy there at the time was a gentleman who built his own FAL's, and we struck up a conversation. He spotted me 20 rounds of Portugese surplus, and we were having a fine time.

Third gentleman walks up at target change, and he's talking to himself. Constant low mutter, just jibbering. No eyes, no ears, scoped sporting rifle. Still talking to himself... He starts shooting, and it's Loud. He lets off 40 rounds in 30 minutes, and at the next target change I take a peek at his empty brass while he's out retrieving. He's shooting a .460 Weatherby Magnum with no eye or ear protection, and talking to himself the whole time, constantly.

Then he left. I figure he must have been stone deaf, and didn't know he was talking to himself out loud the whole time. Or something.

 

[Caimlas]

This one really doesn't count, because it's something I've never heard at either setting, but it's gun related. It drives me absolutely batty when someone says, "he's a card carrying member of the NRA", as if it's somehow a catch-all for someone with conservative values. The single-issue tunnel vision from many so-called conservatives is infuriating. "Yep, take all my freedom, just let me keep my thuty thuty (or .243, as is more common out here) and 12 gauge so I can shoot me a deer and birds every fall."

 

[okiebuckout]

I got two for ya. Neither were at the range, but the are the most current in my head.
1st. I was at wallyworld about to check out when I see an old 'former' friend of mine walk in. This guy is a pathological liar. He has lied about being in the Army, Marines, and about being asked to drive for Tony Stewart's Sprint car team Hopefully I have painted the right picture of the guy for ya. He comes into the store with BDU pants, Desert boots, and a Marine Corps Tshirt. He has an empty holster on his left side and a shiney badge on his right pocket. I say hello and he asks me if i wanna go shoot with him. (I couldn't Mom's day). I asked him what the badge was for. Thats when he tells me he's a private investigator and shows the barney fife badge to me. When I ask about the holster he tells me he just bought a new glock. I asked if he was working at the time. He was supposedly working the night before and he just wore the stuff to go shoot. As we walk out he tells me that he's not even left handed and he needs to get a right handed holster. Who just walks around with an empty holster and shiney badge in walmart just to go to the range:banghead:

2nd: I was leaving the doctor's office the other day and got in the elevator with some delivery guy. I was wearing an NRA hat. He asks what does NRA mean. So I proceeded to tell him. He looks at me and says "So your trained to shoot somebody's a$$?" I said something along the lines of "no the army taught me that" and just shook my head at him and left the elevator. I guess i was just kinda shocked at the time.

 

[NCLivingBrit]

Dumbest thing I've done at the range:

Misreading a surplusrifles.com article on adjusting the sights on my Yugo 59/66 and setting the target at 25yds (remember, this is my first rounds out of my first milsurp/centrefire rifle) whilst setting the sights at 200yds (yep, I could have sworn the sight was graduated in units of 10yds) and shooting my target carrier not once, but twice.

I (and the RO) thought the first time was a newbie flier and rehung the target. Second time it happened we took a better look at the steel hanger and noticed the pair of shiny new 7.62 dings in it. You can imagine how red my face was..... I'm still no great shakes with the rifle, but I can at least keep all my rounds in the 5pt zone at 100yds. More practice is indeed necessary (as is a more visible front sight).

 

[hksw]

Who just walks around with an empty holster and shiney badge in walmart just to go to the range

You can't be a poseur without the accoutrements.

 

[Caimlas]

Used to frequent a 7-11 in the morning for coffee for the commute to the office. This place had a run of attempted robberies that went as follows:
1) The perpetrator comes in the front door, walks up to the counter and pulls his weapon of choice. Did not notice the city patrol car parked around the corner of the building, nor the officer in the back getting his coffee. Officer comes up behind the perp, places the muzzle of his Beretta behind perp's right ear, and then cocks the pistol.
2) Same store, perp pulls up, leaves his car idling as he goes in to conduct his business. City patrol unit pulls up behind the idling car, sees what is going on inside, and waits for the perp to leave, with shotgun at the ready.
In addition to being arrested, got a ticket for leaving a car idling unattended.
3) Same store, this perp gets out of the store and into his car (must have learned from the previous perp), and backs into a city patrol car pulling into the parking lot.

The convenience store has been closed.

That's a damn shame! If i were in charge of the city, I'd try and get the place subsidized and staff the place with an officer or two. "Crime Quick-pickup" or whatever.

 

[Brad Johnson]

Happened when I was but a teen...

Some family and their friends were shooting out on our ranch. One of the friends, a guy we'd just met, was all about his new lever gun. When he wasn't shooting he kept resting the muzzle on his boot top "to keep it out of the dirt". He also had a bad habit of loading the mag with more rounds than he would shoot on his turn, putting the hammer at safe-cock between rounds. After a bit one of our party turned and asked him if it was such a good idea to be resting a loaded gun on his boot top like that. He perked right up and said, "Nope, not worried. It's on safe." At which point he reached down and pulled the trigger to prove his point. Only this time he'd forgotten to thumb the hammer down...

Brad

 

[redsaber75]

Happened when I was but a teen...

Some family and their friends were shooting out on our ranch. One of the friends, a guy we'd just met, was all about his new lever gun. When he wasn't shooting he kept resting the muzzle on his boot top "to keep it out of the dirt". He also had a bad habit of loading the mag with more rounds than he would shoot on his turn, putting the hammer at safe-cock between rounds. After a bit one of our party turned and asked him if it was such a good idea to be resting a loaded gun on his boot top like that. He perked right up and said, "Nope, not worried. It's on safe." At which point he reached down and pulled the trigger to prove his point. Only this time he'd forgotten to thumb the hammer down...

Brad

That is why we have slings in the first place...

 

[Fulcrum of Evil]

> The worst one was this kid who proceeded to tell the manager of the range that ammunition should be banned.

Maybe he heard the Chris Rock $5000 bullet routine and didn't catch on to the joke.

 

[Chui]

A gentleman had a bad primer hit with his Glock. No problem.

He then proceeds to get a screwdriver out of his range bag and commences to poke the screwdriver down the barrel from the business end.

Of course, one bad judgement is often accompanied by another; he had not unloaded the magazine and I really don't know what was the issue with the cartridge still in the chamber.

If you haven't figured it out yet he was not experienced and his finger naturally drifted to the trigger with disasterous results.

He did not lose any fingers but he did a lot of damage to his left hand.

He and his wife decided to sell the G19 and have not been back in.

That's too bad. I would have loved to have seen him decide to obtain training and continue.

 

[Adidas02]

After reading all of these I figured I had to share the only one I have that I can remember off hand..and it's a good one.

A friend and I were shooting at an outdoor ranger here in Texas that allows you to bring your own targets...that what the signs say, but of course that means you can use your own PAPER or CARDBOARD targets on their backstops. Pretty common sense to most humans, but unfortunatly that is not the world we live in today. Anyway, after shooting for about 30 minutes a couple of kids in their lat teens early 20's come in and take a seat at the 50 yard rifle range nest to us. They unpack an AR and a bolt action somethign-or-another...they line goes cold (there were only 3 rifle lanes out of 8 in use) and we all get up to go change out targets. While we are swapping out ours when one of the kids comes out and sets a bottle of tannerite on the freaking backstop! I tell the guy that Tannerite is not allowed here and he says "Sign says we can shoot our own targets"...I tell him that's not what they mean and that they really need to put that away here...kid bassically rolls his eyes at me and gives me a go to hell look.
We all head back to our stations and I start to wonder....do I go tell the RO right now, or just let the kids be stupid and get kicked out and banned? I decided that getting them out for good would be worth it so I let them go (some may call me an a-hole for this, but sometimes the best lesson is the hard one). They sit down pull out the AR and my friend and I jsut stand there ready for hell. A couple of seconds later BOOOOM, Backstop is blown to pieces kids are lauginh their asses off, folks at the pistol range are coming over to see what the hell jsut happend, folks at the 100 yard rifle ranger ar stepping back, and old Ranger Officer comes hauling ass out of his office holding a first aid kit just KNOWING that someone had a gun blow up in their faces. When he gets out he sees everyone standing back looking at 2 kids who are laughing their asses off and sees pieces of cardboard backstop still floating down into a mass of white smoke...it instantly hits him. He starts screaming every profanity in the book at them while running towards their station swinging the First Aid kit. Kids stop laughing and grab their 2 rifles and cases and jump up..they start hauling ass back to their truck with old RO in tow...obviously he has no chance in hell of catching them so he does the next best thing...he hurls the first aid kit at the kids who jump into their truck and haul ass out of the parking lot. About this time the entire range is over the initial shock and is laughing uncontrollably...old RO gets his kit goes inside (where he has the licenses of the two dumbasses) and uses them to make big print outs of thier faces to pin behind the counter banning them for life. After everything had calmed down folks were coming up to me asking what the hell they shot. I told them it was Tannerite and explained what it was, where to get it, and its legality...I'm guessing Dan Tanner got a few extra sales that week.

 

[Colt]

Been married for 3 months... still trying to figure out the ins and outs of it

Just giving you a hard time. You'll learn as you go, like the rest of us!

 

[Invisible Swordsman]

Best one I heard was fairly recently. A customer was looking at a Ruger Blackhawk .45 convertible. Sales person told him that he would need moon clips to use .45 ACP rounds. I tried to correct him, but he was certain you needed the clips due to the lack of a rim on the cartridge. I gave up at that point.

 

[Byron Quick]

A good many folks posting on this thread need to step back and take a look at yourselves as well as the THR mission of promoting responsible firearms ownership.

Yucking it up at some newbie's ignorance and inexperience is not promoting such ownership. Not to mention casting a pall upon such so-called responsible owners.

A good while back there was the post about the guy with dreadlocks having the unmitigated audacity to enquire about legal automatic weapon ownership in a state that does not allow its residents to own such.

That was funny? That there are unconstitutional laws restricting the Second Amendment? I think not, friends. There is nothing funny about a person seeking knowledge. There is certanly nothing funny about the fact he is ignorant about an obscure and unconstitutional set of laws.

I'll just end with reiterating my main beef: many of the yucks y'all are posting don't reflect well on y'all. Think about it.

 

[Adidas02]

I had a similar thought...some post are pokeing fun at folks who are not familiar with firearms that are not what I would consider mainstream...hell, there are some posts that even had me scratching my head.
Regardless it's good to see a list like this because it makes me think twice before I do stuff...don't want to make the list myself ya know. Still, from what I can tell a MAJORITY of the posts here are about people who SHOULD know better...people messing up with things that you should be aware of before you ever pick up, much less purchase a firearm.

 

[Headless]

I watched a fellow come up to the range with an AK-47 and a couple of badly duct-taped together mags. He gets the first mag in OK, first it off, then goes to swap to the second mag. Gets the second mag jammed halfway in. Balances the AK-47 on the counter-top/shooting table top ON IT'S BARREL...4 foot above the ground of course, and starts racking the bolt back and forth and attempting to yank the mag out. Of course the AK slips and falls sideways, leaving the muzzle pointing right down the entire firing line at everyone there shooting. I took that time to get the **** off the line and go over and grab the gun out of the guys hands and clear the jam, pointing out politely that it was a bad idea to attempt to clear a jammed firearm with the muzzle pointing at other people. About 4 people packed up and left when they saw the rifle balanced on it's barrel on the shooting line table.

I've seen a guy just up and walk down a hot range while people are firing away to 'put up more targets' because he was unfuriated by his inability to hit a block of 4 8" shoot-n-c's with his AR-15 w/ scope @ 50 yards. I guess he figured (a) more targets would make it easier (lol) and/or (b) if he got himself shot it wouldn't matter that he couldn't aim. Tis the only time i've seen cease firing yelled on a range - and it didn't get yelled until this idiot was walking BACK from the 50 yard line. The pistol range was hot the entire time this guy was downrange and because of the angles involved, people in the pistol side couldn't see the guy. I had just finished emptying a mag of 9mm downrange, saw a flicker in my peripheral vision, looked over and saw this idiot walking back towards the line from down range right as someone else yelled CEASE FIRING...

Then we had the fellow trying his damndest to force a 7.62 round to chamber in a 5.56 carbine. That was midly comical.

 

[Sharps-shooter]

The first time I went shopping for an AR 15, I was in the gun store, and looking at this whole wall of them, and i noticed the really tiny bore. It looked just like a .22 caliber barrel, but this guy's telling me what mighty weapons they are. so I said, "are these things centerfire?". It was a really stupid question, and I can't claim I was a newbie or anything, because I'd been shooting for many, many years-- just not that kind of gun. I'd never seen a .223 bullet before.

 

[mlandman]

I was at the indoor range and a pair of shooters came in. A young man (to me at least ) in his mid 20s with his GF/wife came in and set up a couple of lanes down with a Glock. She was rather shapley and wearing a tight clingy shirt that was low cut in front...

I took a gander (hey! I'm married, not dead! ) and thought "This should be interesting...".

A little while later she started to do quite the dance trying to get the hot brass out.

I think the store crew was watching on the video too!

 

[matt87]

I've not been at this game long, but we do get the occasional person loading .22lr backwards. (Not deliberately, they drop it into the channel and it bounces. Had this once meself, but I noticed before trying to close the bolt ;-) )

Oh and we got someone mash up a round pretty good by dropping it into the channel and slamming th ebolt closed. Thing is, it washalf hangong over the receiver wall. Didn't go off luckily.

 

[Pitmaster]

I'm guessing Dan Tanner got a few extra sales that week.

At least one this week.

 

[ADKWOODSMAN]

Worst advice in a gun shop

Worst advice in a gun shop. Just use any shotgun primer in your reloads, there all the same!!! Just look at any manual and see how pressure climbs with different shotshell primers. Nuf said.

 

[gyrfalcon16]

This is the "dumbest thing" I've done... I had two identical 9mm Omni-llama's and went to the range to test them out.

Maybe I had been watching too many action movies, but I decided load up my last two clips and fire them both at the same time. Definitely not accurate, but it was fun until the guy who ran the range tapped me on the shoulder and said "we don't do that here!" in a pissed off tone.

On second thought... maybe the dumbest thing I did was empty a 75 round drum of 7.62x39 on the guy shooting black powder next to me. It's funny how you don't always notice who's getting hit by your brass until you're the one getting it in the side of the head.

 

[otcconan]

Back when I was 13 or so, my older brother was getting ready to go deer hunting. He pointed his .284 at my head and dry-fired it. I told him "dude, don't do that again!" He went deer hunting and I assumed he'd never do it again.

A week later, he does the same thing, only doesn't dry fire it because I beg him not to. But he had it pointed at my head. He said, "what's the big deal... there's nothing in the chamber" and he works the lever...and a round pops out of the chamber.

"That's the big deal," I said. Thereafter, he NEVER pointed any gun at me.

 

[Templar223]

"Dumb" things...

As an instructor, you see a lot... most of it is harmless, but it will (and it should) make you cringe anyway.

You mean like the guy in the pistol class who adjusts his ear protectors with his wheelgun in his hand... loaded wheelgun.

Like the lady who points her Ruger Sp-101 at your gut and you're too far away to reach it... ah, shucks, it was unloaded. I could see the cylinders...

The guy who looks down the barrel to see if his pistol is chambered. (Sir, let's try a better and safer way to check that. [Demonstrate press check then have him do it.] "Oh, yes. That prolly is safer." Yes, sir, it is. It won't cause consternation among the staff and fellow shooters either.)

Sometimes kids do dumb things innocently. Like run in front of the firing line chasing a butterfly even if there was only one kid getting ready to shoot and the instructor grabbed the gun and pointed it skyward as he saw the little girl run (I saw her too moments before and had a bad feeling...)

Or the eight year old or so who I handed a Ruger .22 pistol to, loaded with only five 'cause I had a feeling... He said he had shot one before and seemed halfway competent. Bang... Bang... and the muzzle just kept rising and he kept firing. "Whoa there, Tex!" as I pushed his still firing hands down back on target. "We'll finish this segment one round at a time, young man."

I've heard some dumb things in my time, but they are often from $6.00/hour employees at Kmart or the old K's Merchandise Mart (some really scary stuff told to novice / newbie shooters). Not too much b.s. comes from the gun shops I usually hang around at... at least from the owner's side of the counter anyway.

John

 

[Joe Meyer]

Once,shooting some "right smart" loads in my Ruger Vaquero, old model, I hit the ground about three feet in front of the target on the sixth shot. It would have been my best off hand group ever( under 3" @ 25 yards), but for some reason, I had to make myself look really stupid.