Don’t Be a Shooting Range Jerk

Always be safe when handling a firearm.

There is nothing more frightening that finding yourself staring down the muzzle of someone else’s firearm. If you don’t know the 4 Basic Rules of Gun Safety, study them before you ever leave the house. While some of the tips in this list fall into the minor irritation category, being unsafe on the gun range isn’t one of them. It can get you or someone else seriously injured or killed.

• Treat every firearm as if it’s loaded. I don’t care if you have the cylinder out of your revolver or the bolt out of your rifle. If you get in the habit of thinking your gun is loaded and might go off at any time, you’ll have the muzzle pointed in a safe direction the one time it actually is loaded and you didn’t know it.
• This ties in to the first rule, never point your gun at something you don’t intend to shoot. Never allow your muzzle to cover something you don’t intend to destroy. Get in the habit of keeping your gun pointed in a safe direction at all times, not just when you think it’s loaded.
• Always keep your finger outside of the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot. Crusty old shooters like to phrase it “keep your booger hook off the bang stick,” but the meaning is the same. Don’t touch the trigger until you are ready to fire your gun.
• Always be sure of your target. On any public range, the targets should be clearly marked and placed in a safe location with an adequate backstop. But it never hurts to double-check before shooting. Know where your bullet will go if you miss the target.

When you arrive at the range, double-check to make certain your firearm is unloaded before you leave your vehicle. Most ranges have a rule that firearms need to be either cased or holstered when entering and leaving the range area, so make sure you have a case before you leave the house.

Most public ranges will have a range officer. Listen to what he or she tells you. Follow instructions completely. It’s their job to make sure everyone has a safe shooting experience. Never touch your firearm while other shooters are downrange. And never, never fire a gun while another shooter is on the other side of the safety line, even if they are all the way across the range and out of your line of fire.

Clean up after yourself.

Police your brass when you finish shooting. For most longtime shooters, saving spent brass for reloading gets to be second nature. But even if you are shooting non-reloadable milsurp or plinking away with a .22, clean up your mess when you finish. A broom and dustpan tossed in the vehicle before leaving the house make quick work of picking up a pile of spent .22 cases.

For some reason, public shooting ranges seem to be a hotbed for folks who don’t understand how a garbage can works. Drink bottles, empty ammo boxes, food wrappers, old targets, all get scattered about the benches and the range. It should go without saying but throw away your trash when you finish for the day. It won’t hurt a thing to pick up someone else’s trash as well. Seeing you do it might make someone else do it too. If the range you frequent doesn’t have a trash bin, or if that bin always seems to be full, take a garbage bag or two with you and haul it out when you go.

Don’t insist on going downrange to check your target after every shot.

Ammo is expensive, and sometimes you only want to check the zero on your rifle or fire off a three-shot group or two, but don’t be the person that constantly calls for the entire range to cease fire so that you can walk down to check your target after every few shots.

Instead, invest in a spotting scope or even a good pair of binoculars so that you can check your targets from the bench without making everyone else on the line stop shooting. Using high-visibility targets will also help you locate your shot from a distance.

This is another one that shouldn’t need to be said. But, based on the ranges I have visited, it does. Here’s some info that might come in handy. No one cares what date you were there. You don’t need to whip out your trusty hunting knife and carve it into the wooden benches. Same goes for markers and spray paint. We are already there to have a good time. We don’t need a random phone number written on the wall to help us find one.

A random miss can’t be helped, but don’t purposely shoot at the target stands. I’ve been to ranges where the stands were so pulverized with bullet holes that you couldn’t attach a target. Same goes for overgunning. If the range or target is designed for .22 long rifle or handguns, don’t assume its ok to whip out your magnum deer rifle and blaze away. And don’t even get me started on the folks that think the bulbs in the range lights make good targets. Aside from the unsafe practice of firing a round into the air, it makes the range unusable for folks who want to get out and squeeze off a few rounds after work on a winter’s evening. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the light fixtures the next time you visit a range. I’ll just about guarantee you’ll see a bullet hole or two.

Point blank, unless they are paying for a lesson or actively asking your opinion, most shooters don’t want your advice. Aside from politely pointing out unsafe gun handling, keep your opinions to yourself. Not only does the range know-it-all annoy the other shooters, having someone talk to you while you are shooting is distracting. All it takes is a few seconds of lapsed attention for a shooter to not notice someone downrange.

Unless both parties are wearing electronic hearing protection, having a conversation on the range necessitates either screaming at each other, annoying other shooters in the process, or removing your hearing protection while you talk, possibly causing irreversible damage to your ears. Just keep to yourself and save the conversation for the parking lot.

Bottom line, we need public shooting ranges. Practice makes perfect and the public range is about the only place to get that practice for most hunters. Being a jerk at the range not only keeps others from enjoying one of their favorite pastimes, continued problems just make it easier for local and state agencies to shut down shooting ranges than to keep fighting and repairing bad behavior.

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