Gun Range Tomfoolery Stories

Xavier relates a story about some people doing things approximately as stupid and dangerous as driving drunk when he went to a gun range recently. It reminded me of an event that happened when I was a boy in Houston.

I suppose I was 12 or younger at the time. We had gone out as a family (at least Dad, Mom, and me, I don't recall if Sister #2 was there) to a local outdoor range to kill some paper people. The firing line at this range had a row of separate benches with a small table or counter at each station attached to the 4x4s holding up the corrugated roof. There was a space between every couple of benches to let you out onto the range. The floor was a long strip of concrete maybe 3 meters wide. The short pistol range targets were upright 4x4s with oriented strand board walls to which targets would be stapled. There was an elevated platform behind the firing line with the Range Master on overwatch, and roving Range Officers as well. It was a firing session, with guns a'blazin' and lead flying downrange. A family that must either have been populated with stupid, unthinking people, or else they were from a very bad part of town, showed up. There were at least 3-4 of them, maybe more but I was focused on what a specific few of them were doing.

What they were doing was walking downrange, and then posting targets on the backstop. During a live firing session. As in, the stall next to them has somebody with a gun very obviously going BANG BANG BANG, and they bebopped out onto the grass and started stapling targets up. Firing nearby stopped immediately as the shooters with some [deleted] sense saw what was going on. The Range Master got on the 1MC and called a cease-fire and proceeded to bawl them out over the PA. I think we left not too long after that but I'm not sure if it were because of them or if we were done anyway.

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Thinking of that shooting range reminds me of a few other times we went there. Once, it sounded like someone was shooting a cap gun as we got out of the car, and then again as we were walking from the shop to the range. It was a woman shooting a little tiny Beretta or Taurus .22 pistola.

Another time, we got a bench next to an old man (like 75+) with a BIG gun. It was a Desert Eagle in .50AE and he was shooting it slowly. Slowly as in, he would pick the hand-cannon up and take aim and fire once BOOOOOOOM and then rest the pistol on the table again for a few seconds. It must have been a fun way to get tired in a hurry.

Yet another session was with Mom trying out her new Glock 17. Limp-wristing it a little. She managed to limp-wrist bad enough to get it to stovepipe pretty reliably, but only with Blazer aluminum-cased ammunition. The funny part, though, was that she was also limp-wristing badly enough to have it eject the shells straight up and slightly to the rear, and they were coming down on her head. She had a poofy big-curls hairdo that day, and the shells were getting caught in the curls and she did a hot-shells-in-my-hair dance that was moderately amusing.