Ask Ian: My Most Unsafe Range Experience (Incoming Rounds!) (ad-free)

DaveJD

This short clip is probably more of a stupid movie stunt rather than a range safety incident, but it's definitely a case of they shoulda known better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKsQ3wEpFrU

John S Wren

When the local pheasant hunt decided to shoot in the field across the road from my house. Some of the guns were utterly clueless and were shooting at birds as they flew in front of cars, my house and me. My language was not polite.

Paul Beck

I would have thought your worst case scenario story would have been the one that sent you to the hospital .

Brian Jay

Divine intervention!

Lostngone

Can you imagine shooting and gun Jesus drives up to tell you that you are doing it wrong! 😳😱🤯

Bruce Brodnax

Confession mode here: when I was about 6*, I turned off the line with a 22lr rifle to ask my dad something and he immediately grabbed the barrel (pointing towards him) & forced it back toward the targets, yelling "If you ever point a gun at me again you'd better be ready to shoot, because I will certainly kill you first if I can!" Really sunk the point home, since I was very aware my dad loved all his kids fiercely, and since I was the youngest, I got extras. Muzzle control has been a point of keen awareness for me ever since... * - Texan, son of a Marine, so already been shooting for a year or so, I should have known better!

Bruce Brodnax

For the usual reasons, you were too devoted to work and weren't spending enough "quality time" together!.. 🤣

Mike DePolis

Could have had your wife lay down suppressing fire while you flanked them! :-)

Brian Jay

Thank you Ian!

Forgotten Weapons

We broke up a while ago.

Kenneth Marshall

Wife? I thought you were married to Karl.

During a military live fire exercise it is doctrine for maneuver elements to be forward of support by fire locations in order for them to assault the given objective under everyday circumstances. The rule is, less than a 45 degree fan off a rifle muzzle is considered unsafe, this can vary depending on the platform providing support by fire IE Machinegun on tripod, sniper rifle, Aircraft, Artillery etc. At a lower level, it is also the case that a buddy bounds forward of his support by fire element (the other shooter) to become "Set" and the process is then initiated by the other element until they reach the limit of advance. During this process, individual maneuver elements will have RSO's walking and ensuring proper muzzle discipline, the number of walkers is dictated by the size of the element maneuvering at the time IE Buddy Team, Team, Squad, Platoon, ETC. All this to say, with the proper RSO allocation and measures in place, the aforementioned shooting match could be not as unsafe as it may seem. This would depend on the course of fire, and the layout, which I don't know anything about. So, at least for the Army, which is generally risk averse in training, it's way more common for people to be downrange of you while you're shooting, than most people realize.

I’ve had almost the same exact thing happen to me, I was not as polite Ian.

Julian Corbett

Was watching a live Twitch broadcast from an animal sanctuary when they suddenly hit the floor and evacuated, as someone locally had set up a shooting demo/event/competition and range overshoots were coming through the sanctuary. I guess this would've been another Rule 4 violation. Fortunately none of the staff (or animals) were hit.