Shooting Fatalities at the Range

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At a family range in Florida, I had an AD with a CZ-52. It was a real accidental discharge and was not negligent. I was with my dad and we were shooting his 52, which was a blued rebuild. I chambered a round and then activated the decocker and blew a round of Chinese 7.62x25 into the ground perhaps ten feet in front of us.

I obeyed the rules and nobody was hurt (though dad gave me a withering glare until he found out what happened). Could have been a bit different.

Ash
 
The case of the lady killed when her husband tried to dislodge a chambered round was well-documented in "Handloader Magazine" at the time.

The bolt had been removed from the rifle, and she was standing behind the open breech. Regardless of what "common wisdom" says about the insensitivity of smokeless powders, in THIS case the tapping of the cleaning rod was sufficient to touch it off. The lady was struck in the abdomen by a piece of the case, and died of the wound. Witnesses said that the "tapping" of the cleaning rod was quite gentle.

We would all be well-advised to keep this incident in mind, before getting too bold when dealing with jammed cartridges.
 
A gentleman was shot at The Firing Line in Pearl River NY a few weeks back.... I think it was ruled a suicide, but I am not sure.

Also, there was one at the shooting range in Northridge CA about 6 months ago... guy committed suicide there.
 
Here's the range murder story...

http://www.wsaz.com/home/headlines/20588244.html

WAYNE COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- A parishioner at Highlawn Presbyterian church in Huntington confirm the victim in a murder in Wayne County Thursday was their pastor, Mark McCalla.

Wayne County Sheriff David Pennington said McCalla was found dead at the rifle range in the Beech Fork area.

A state forestry worker found the body around 9:45 a.m. Thursday.

Sheriff’s deputies, state troopers and Huntington Police investigators scoured the area for clues all day.

The West Virginia National Guard even did several flyovers in a search for suspects.

The sheriff said they collected a lot of evidence.

He also said McCalla died of at least one gun shot wound to the head.


From the Associated Press:

WAYNE, W.Va. (AP) - Authorities are investigating the death of a former Ohio minister whose body was found at a shooting range in the Beech Fork area.

The Rev. Mark McCalla's body was found Thursday morning. Wayne County Sheriff David Pennington says McCalla suffered a single shot to the head. Police say it's a homicide.

Before serving at Highlawn Presbyterian Church in Huntington, McCalla worked at churches in Columbus, Ohio, and Corry and Franklin, Pa.

McCalla's body was found about an hour after he served breakfast to a group of volunteers working to improve area housing for low-income residents.

Pennington says authorities are not sure if the 45-year-old went to the state park by himself.
 
ETA: Oops same story as previous poster.

Then there's this...

http://www.tidewaternews.com/articles/2008/06/24/latest_news/breaking77.txt

Spivey dies in Navy training exercise

Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:00 AM EDT

WILLIAMSBURG-A Franklin sailor with the Navy Expeditionary Logistics Support Group died Saturday after an accidental handgun discharge during a weapons exercise at Naval Weapons Stations Yorktown-Cheatham Annex in Williamsburg.

Petty Officer 1st Class Ronald D. Spivey, 53, died from a gunshot wound to the chest during a scheduled weapons qualification exercise at the Cheatham Annex live firing range. Spivey was among approximately 40 service members qualifying with 9mm handguns at about 3:15 p.m. Saturday when the incident occurred. Spivey was treated at the scene by a Navy hospital corpsman and taken by ambulance to Riverside Medical Center in Newport News. He was pronounced dead at 4:33 p.m.

The Navy is investigating the incident.

Spivey has been a member of the reserve component for 24 years. He was mobilized in June 2005 for a seven-month deployment to Kuwait as part of Navy Customs Battalion PAPA. Spivey was awarded the Navy Achievement Medal for his support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. In May, Spivey affiliated with the Norfolk-based reserve detachment of NAVELSG’s Expeditionary Support Unit.

Spivey’s son, Nick, said Monday that he had no comment at this time.
 
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Well mine wasnt first hand info. This was told to me by a range officer. The guy had a hand wound. Other than that i have not heard anything either. im sure if you do a search in google you will find real events with news stuff. just im not too sure i would want to be reading that stuff
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No, that's second hand information. You being told by a witness and reporting it is not first hand. First hand is "I saw this happen."

In legal terms, this is "hearsay."
 
I'm sure you all mean well, and are even reasonably sure that you're repeating true and actual incidents, but I detect a (perhaps) complete lack of names, dates, times, locations, and newspaper or television reports to comfirm the veracity of these accounts.

Sorry folks, sounds like BS
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Well there you have it. My take people telling you what they remembered but not checking sources. Not telling BS or stories. It just took someone that actually went to find some of the information. Im sure some of those stories are real. Weather they are being told correctly or not remains to be seeing. As most are saying what they heard or was told. Im sure if we all spent 5 minutes on google we could come up with more. With some real news articles. again though its just something that i rather not read or deal with. Its kinda like getting a fisherman to tell you all the stories about people who have died at sea. Then asking for them to give you proof and photos. They probably could but since they fish they rather not.
 
This incident did not result in a death but did cause a serious injury. In the early 80's I was stationed in Sacremento, CA and was competing in big bore metallic silhouette matches. One Sunday we were competing at the match held at the Folsom range and I was spotting for a friend of mine who was shooting the pigs at 100 yards. It so happened that he was on the last position next to the 50 yard chickens. A ricochet off one of the chickens can back and hit him in the right eye. It cut his eye in half.

Yes, he was wearing shooting glasses.
 
I'm to understand this happens very often in California, and that most ranges there will not allow solitary people to rent guns.
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Nope. Only to solitary people who come in WITHOUT any guns of their own. I've rented several pistols in Kalipornia. I normally shoot alone and, as long as I had my own guns, it was never a problem. Makes sense because if someone already had guns, why would the need to rent one to off themselves?
 
Try Correcting Yourself

Quote:

Well mine wasnt first hand info. This was told to me by a range officer. The guy had a hand wound. Other than that i have not heard anything either. im sure if you do a search in google you will find real events with news stuff. just im not too sure i would want to be reading that stuff


MakAttak wrote:
No, that's second hand information. You being told by a witness and reporting it is not first hand. First hand is "I saw this happen."

In legal terms, this is "hearsay."
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Try and read the entire post next time, he never said that was first hand information; he says it wasnt first hand info. Nothing makes you look like a bigger chode than when you try to correct someone on the internet and you were incorrect the entire time.

In legal terms, that is "Due Diligence."
 
Serious injuries from range accidents are rare, and fatal accidents even more so.

Nonetheless, they will happen, because they can, and because the world isn't made of Nerf and Playskool.

I remember watching a real world forensics mysteries show a couple of years back.

The long story short was that the range wasn't designed safely to begin with. The indoor range was at the top of a hill behind the outdoor range, which did not have a sufficient berm.

Duh.

Freaking Duh.

What had happened was that during a competition, some guy's nervous wreck of an overtuned 1911 doubled, the second shot being when the pistol was in full recoil, and hit a kid who was sitting inside the indoor range.
 
When I take my friends shooting for their first time, they usually want to know how often people die at the range. I've settled on telling them that they're safer at the range than they are on the car ride getting there.
 
Well, I can assure you, the cleaning rod incident at the Holton range -did- happen...

It impressed me enough that I -always- look down the bore for a full inspection before I insert my bolt to start a course of fire.

The minigun incident at Knob Creek was where a man insisted that his young daughter fire it. She wasn't able to control it, and it with still running (but dry) when the mount gave way, and it fell on her. Sad.

Also was at JR's quarry, and a guy was shooting at a close-in steel plate (you know, the big hanger?), and a bit of shrapnel came back and buried itself under the skin in his arm - If it had hit somewhere else, it could have been lethal.

Frankly, these are reminders that our toys need to be respected. And that's about it.

Frankly, I'm FAR more scared of using my table saw, routers, or circular saws than I am of going to the range... And chainsaws give me the heebies...
 
What had happened was that during a competition, some guy's nervous wreck of an overtuned 1911 doubled, the second shot being when the pistol was in full recoil, and hit a kid who was sitting inside the indoor range.
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This was on The Science Channel not to long ago. It was on there a few times before. They couldn't figure out where it had come from and why nobody heard the shot.
 
There was one that was probably close to fatal posted in rifle country a few months ago of a guy shooting a .50 bmg at a steel plate 100yds away, bullet came back and knocked off his ear muffs. Had it smacked his grape it probably would have been lights out.
And chainsaws give me the heebies
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Just wear a goalie mask, for safety :p
 
One can google this for details but this is the real deal. A young boy (12?) fired a powerful revolver near Bastrop, TX. A 454 Casull or similar. The barrel recoiled back and hit him in the head and killed him.
 
Thanks again to all who replied.

My point as stated at the beginning was that we shooters, not wanting to draw negative attention to our sports, tend to NOT discuss or deal with it. I think that Scrat pretty much prooves this in his posts.

Just like history, "If we don't learn from our mistakes, we are doomed to repeat them".

Regards, Mike
 
win32spl sais
I'm sure you all mean well, and are even reasonably sure that you're repeating true and actual incidents, but I detect a (perhaps) complete lack of names, dates, times, locations, and newspaper or television reports to comfirm the veracity of these accounts.

Sorry folks, sounds like BS.
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Umm, go look at post #6 mine and reference the URL to the story. No BS there.

Besides, I worked with her husband.
 
IIRC there is less than 3000 firearm accident fatalities a year in the USA and the number has dropped. Not very many considering the amount of people and guns in the USA.

Suicides are a different matter, some countries with low gun ownership still have high suicide rates such as Japan.
 
the incident i was talking about was in this thread

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=334906

with pictures here

powder burns on the arm
S7300439.gif

the ammo tray
S7300427.gif
S7300435.gif
S7300437.gif

the case that was detonated
S7300428.gif
S7300431.gif

and the story of the incident

I was in the middle of bringing pain to a target when there was a bright flash right next to me and I felt something on my arm. I put the gun down and looked to my right where I keep my ammo on the bench. There were bullets still in the tray surrounding the explosion but they all shot just fine afterwards.

The tray was sitting on a full box of ammo....the bullet had partially lodged into the unopen box and rested on other bullets

This is .40 S&W ammo and I was shooting it out of my Steyr M40-A1. An interesting note about the Steyr is that it throws brass straight up in the air when ejecting. Apparently, this was a freak incident and as you can see on the primer, an empty casing that bounced off the ceiling tile hit it hard enough make that kind of dent and set off the primer. We even put the rim of a cartridge over the primer and it's a perfect fit.

I didn't get hurt, just got sprayed with unburnt gun powder. Very very weird.
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so please, before you start calling these stories hearsay... consider that they might actually be true...
 
Posted by El Tejon:
How about the death at Gunsite (at the hotel)? While off the range, they were taking a class there.
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There's no hotel at Gunsite, and the shooting didn't occur on Gunsite property.

The accidental shooting of a Gunsite student occurred at a hotel in Prescott, Arizona---which is approximately thirty miles from Gunsite.
 
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