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

[km101]

A few years back, I was re-qualifying for my Texas CHL at the instructor's range. The shooter on my right was a young lady who had never fired a handgun before.

She managed to put 2 rounds into the lower left of my silhouette target and even got one round on the target to MY left, or two targets away from hers. This was all at 7 yards! When the instructor was notified, he took her off the line and said that he would work with her later.

The target frames were 30" wide and there was 36" between them, so she had to mis-align her pistol by as much as 10 feet at 7 yards to hit the far left target.

Truly some bad shooting. But the instructor should never have allowed her on the range knowing that she had never fired a handgun!

 

[goon]

I let a friend of mine try a shot from a flintlock musket I used to own. She flinched when the pan flashed and missed by seven feet at the 25 yard line. The shot sent a huge and expensive lead round ball into the berm with an awesome impact crater blasted into soft, wet earth. Little chunks of mud were propelled into the stratosphere and rained down everywhere.

Awful shooting, but it was still a great time!

 

[45_auto]

The shot sent a huge and expensive lead round ball

.75 caliber lead balls are what, 50 cents each?

http://www.trackofthewolf.com/list/Item.aspx/188/1

 

[chipcom]

You mean, besides my own?

There it is.

Unless someone is doing something unsafe, I worry more about my own shooting.

 

[rondog]

Unless someone is doing something unsafe, I worry more about my own shooting.

Me too. I try to stay away from other shooters as much as possible, so the crappy shooting I usually see is my own.

 

[GEM]

A guy on the rifle range decided to shoot off his target lane at another target. This caused a ricochet round that came back and seriously injured a person. The shooter and his buddies tried to slink away but were stopped and got to talk to the law.

 

[Bobson]

At an LE academy in Arizona, it took a cadet in my class five runs through the COF to qualify, and he got personal one-on-one training from two different instructors between attempts 2-3, 3-4, and again between attempt 4-5. That was the worst shooting I ever saw. Ironically, guy had the loudest, most cocky mouth of anyone there.

 

[goon]

.75 caliber lead balls are what, 50 cents each?

More like $1 each when you factor shipping in. Still, not cheap to shoot a lot of when I was in college. My budget did impact how much I could shoot. But I still don't regret letting friends shoot that thing.

 

[Archie]

I'm in my middle 60s and I've shot all my life. It's hard to pinpoint just one.

The one that comes to mind - not safety violation, but just poor marksmanship - was a couple guys shooting a single AR-15 type rifle. They unloaded the rifle and somewhere between fifty and three thousand rounds of ammo - correct ammo, by the way. A shooting break was called and they set up a silhouette target (something like a B27 as I recall) at the 25 yard line. When the range was declared clear and 'fire' was sounded, they took turns for some time.

They weren't dangerous, rude or boisterous - sometimes they laughed a bit loud, but...

After they had each fired a good number of rounds, one of them asked the general opinion - several shooters during a line break - of 'how' they were doing. (Seriously, the target looked like a bad guy in the aftermath of a "Fearless Fosdick" gun battle.) I was trying to think of a polite, yet correct reply when one of the other shooters suggested they change the target every once in a while.

They took that well, to their credit. I never saw them again, but I didn't get back to that range much, either. I hope they kept at it - either hooking up with someone who could show them or at least reading a decent book on the subject.

But that time, their shooting was about as awful as possible without being 'hazardous'.

 

[3212]

On the other hand,I watched an older gentleman with a scoped handgun call his shots on steel silhouettes at 100 yards.The pigs nose,the hind leg,front leg etc.He hit them all.

 

[.452]

Probably the guy who had a visiting gal fire his .500 for laughs.

First round went off as expected, the recoil spun the gun around backwards, causing a second shot point blank to her head.

 

[Bobson]

^ What? That actually happened?

 

[.452]

Google ".500 negligent suicide"

Sad.

 

[JohnKSa]

It's hard to know if this is the incident described above, but it certainly has happened.

http://gunssavelives.net/news/woman...-with-smith-and-wesson-500-at-shooting-range/

Someone put a Smith and Wesson .500 revolver in the hands of the visiting woman.
After firing one shot from the gun, the woman lost her grip, the gun got turned around, and she accidentally fired a second shot, which hit her in the head, and killed her.​

http://bearingarms.com/negligent-suicide-with-a-500-smith-wesson-revolver/

The Ralls County Sheriff’s Department says the shooting happened Sunday at the Salt River Gun Range near New London. Authorities say 25-year-old Andrea Jinneth Corredor-Rivera of Colombia died at the scene.

Corredor-Rivera died of a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Ralls County Sheriff Gerry Dinwiddie tells WGEM-TV that the woman was shooting a .500-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun when the strength of the gun’s recoil caused her to lose control. She was visiting family in the area.

The sheriff said the gun spun around in her hand, leading to a second fatal shot.​

 

[HKGuns]

That is sad........

I can't tell you how many times I see pistol shooters peppering a target 5 yards away and they are all over the place. Pretty hard to understand how you can't drill a respectable, single hole at that distance.

 

[thewillweeks]

Since I rarely visit a range, definitely my own shooting at my CCH class. I used a borrowed pistol and yeah...

 

[tarosean]

Probably my last CHL requal.

Guy bragged and bragged and bragged about being a glock armorer, shot glocks for decades and decades, Glock this and Glock that. (did I say bragged?)
Basically one of those people you just wanted to slap.

When it was all said and done. His B-52 looked like it took a Shotgun blast from 50yrds. Yet we only shoot from 3-5-7yrds.

 

[greenr18]

I've seen a lot of moronic unsafe things at public ranges. IE idiots just walking onto the line when people are shooting, no warning or anything what so ever, people waving around loaded guns with their finger on the trigger in the direction of everyone else, people randomly firing from the hip and hitting random things in a 180 fan, I once saw a guy point a loaded 1911 with his finger on the trigger in his face to see if his laser sight was turned on... I HATE public ranges but I have no access to private land to shoot... a while ago some idiot at a range 45 minutes from here shot someone because he was waving around a loaded AR with his finger on the trigger. People can hate me all they want for saying this, but I have seen enough stupid things and heard enough stupid things previously working in a gun shop and being to public ranges to know there are a LOT of people who are frankly too dumb to have guns. These are mostly people who, as they say, "can't be taught common sense." Obviously being on this forum I am not anti gun, nor am I against the second amendment, but the people I'm talking about definitely don't do us any favors and they are ALWAYS the people the media focuses on to bash guns, gun owners, and the second amendment.

 

[ljnowell]

.75 caliber lead balls are what, 50 cents each?

http://www.trackofthewolf.com/list/Item.aspx/188/1

So 500 would be $250? I would call that expensive.

 

[goon]

So 500 would be $250? I would call that expensive.

Plus shipping.
Balls for a .75 (I was using .715) are HEAVY, and heavy isn't cheap to ship.

 

[EIB0879]

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.

That happened at Ft. Chaffee in 1981. They were firing 81mm mortars and a round ended up in a farmer's back yard. The officer that ran the 81mm program was relieved and i was his replacement. When i went to IMPC in 1982 at Ft. Benning when the instructors found out i was from that unit i think they watched me a little closer.

 

[JohnKSa]

Balls for a .75 (I was using .715) are HEAVY, and heavy isn't cheap to ship.

Thirteen of them would weigh more than a pound. 500 of them would be just shy of 40 pounds.

 

[EIB0879]

I went through Infantry Officer Basic Course at Ft. Benning in 1979. We were conducting a platoon live fire exercise. Our platoon went through with no incident. The other light track platoon started and we heard an urgent "cease fire" called soon afterward.

The range personel pulled the other platoon back with us. One of the guys was holding his helmet. There was a hole in the front and back of it. Even though the platoon was on line with no one forward when someone moved up and hit the ground a round was fired down the line.

The bullet hit the back of the helmet went around the inside rim apparantly,and came out the front. The guy who it happened to wasn't hurt,. He was actually laughing and shaking his head saying that he had spent a tour in Vietnam as an EM with the 101st and never came that close to being killed.

 

[Delford]

A bit off topic here but my dad was born in Bartlesville and was at Ft Sill in WWII. He was a 90 day wonder and became a Field Artillery Instructor at Ft Bragg in NC when the war ended. He was a 1st Lieutenant at that point.

I rarely visit ranges as I shoot on a farm but I have seen a guy put 9mm rounds everywhere but COM from 12 ft. Nice guy with a Glock 19. He needed some helpful instruction.

 

[Warp]

That is sad........

I can't tell you how many times I see pistol shooters peppering a target 5 yards away and they are all over the place. Pretty hard to understand how you can't drill a respectable, single hole at that distance.

FWIW defensive pistol shooting would not be shooting a single hole at 5 yards as that would mean you are shooting far too slow