OH S#!% moment

So we were at a camp site with a few friends. I went there just for the day and they'd been there for a few day already. We were shooting steel plates across the water about 30' away. My friend who I always shoot with wanted to shoot my Zastava NPAP with the new ALG AKT trigger. Well he shot it alright. But some reason after the 8th round he stopped. Turned over and his face was bleeding. He had a small cut on his cheek. The x39 Wolf ammo hit the plate and a piece of the copper jacket with lead landed on his face. Thinking nothing at the time, we busted out the first aid kit and butterfly taped his wound closed. Went through the night and when he got home, he took a magnet and ran it on his face with no luck. About 2.5 weeks after the incident he told his wife to check his cheek again, well he SnapChat me this:

 

I was about 15, Dad, brother and I were up shooting in Angeles National Forest (back when there were still open public shooting ranges there). We were getting ready to clean up for the day, my brother and dad were packing up the guns, I was walking down range to collect the target stands. My brother notices that the Colt Mustang .380 he was just shooting was still sitting there with the hammer back and the chamber closed. So he decides (without actually checking) that the chamber is empty and the hammer is back. He takes it, points it downrange (without even looking at where he is pointing it), and pulls the trigger to drop the hammer. <BANG> He missed me by a matter of feet. I heard the bullet whiz by me and whack the dirt. I turned around and ran back to the firing line, ready to just lay into him, but Dad was already on it, like only an ex-WWII drill instructor could. It's been over thirty years now, but to my recollection I don't believe my brother ever picked up another firearm after that.

Fast forward about ten years. I had joined the Navy, and left the Navy. My Dad had passed away and I had inherited all his guns. I was dating this girl and decided to take her to the range, another open range up in ANF. She had a habit of forgetting to put on her hearing protection, and I was getting tired of reminding her. So, finally, I decided that I wasn't going to remind her anymore, figuring that she would only do it once. So she's there ready to shoot, with (coincidentally) that exact same Colt Mustang, and at the last second she remembers that she needs to put on her ear muffs. So she puts them on. Without putting the gun down. Without putting the safety on. Without even removing her finger from the trigger guard. (Walk through the motion with your hands. At one point you have the gun pointed directly at the top of your skull. With your finger on the trigger.) I was standing about six or eight feet away, and at first I thought she was putting the gun down, so by the time I realized what she was doing it was all over and she was poised ready to shoot again. And by that point I was so stunned by the sheer stupidity of it I was speechless. And then she pauses, and turns to me and says, "Oh, that was really dumb, wasn't it?" I said, "Yes, actually, that was really dumb. Put the safety on, put the gun down, and come here for a second." And then I proceeded to seriously tear into her about the graphic consequences of the failure to adhere to basic gun safety practices. We stopped dating shortly thereafter.

 

Was loading rounds into my shotgun while shooting 5 stand. Tossed a shell in, closed the chamber and it went off (semi auto). Scared the shit out of me and I set it down and stepped off the line. I had no clue why it happened.

Guy tossing the clay's simply stated "and that's why we point guns down range at all times".

 

We were apparently shooting the wrong type of ammunition for the metal targets at the range and I had a bit of metal come back and hit me in the cheek, just a scratch but I'm glad I was wearing eyes and ears. I was already paranoid about eye injuries but that reinforced the sentiment.

 

A couple years back a girl I was dating at the time was laying on my bed and I was rummaging through my closet looking for god knows what when my Mossberg 12ga came tumbling out and crashed on to the floor. Nothing happened and she was none the wiser but I picked it up to find it was loaded with the safety off. I was traumatized. This thing is old, I almost couldn't believe it didn't fire.

I've always kept 1 or 2 loaded guns, always with the safety on. I could only imagine I had switched it off while cleaning it, it's my own ignorance and temporary lapse of judgement. It still freaks me out.

 

I saw this happen a few weekends back, we were shooting 5.56 and 300 BLK at metal targets from 20-50yrds. Is this common? I want to buy some metal targets for when my AR is finished but these stories of ricochets and shrapnel are worrisome.

 

Had an "accidental discharge" when I was 13. Fortunately the gun was safely pointed at the ground. 28 years later it still feels like it just happened.

 

When you mount your targets, you want to angle them 15-20 degrees toward the ground to direct any inevitable ricochets down. Wear shooting glasses (and jeans, I've noticed my shins catch more than anything else), try to keep shots longer (especially rifle shots), and you'll be fine.

 

How does one angle them? We've always just kept them on swinging hooks, they naturally plumb themselves so I guess their is a slight angle?

 

I'd just check what the proper type of ammo is to use on metal plates and you should be fine. I can't recall what the sign said but next time we're at the gun club I'll try to remember to take note.

 

I was in my favorite gun shop once when one of the guys behind the counter was dicking around with a lever action rifle. He pulled the trigger and BANG! The bullet missed another employee by less than a foot, it went through a piece of 3\4" plywood and ended up hitting a Sig magazine hanging on the wall by the front window. He didn't last long after that.

 

I've got a good one. I got shot at the range back in 2012. I had met a friend at the local outdoor range here in North San Diego County and had been there for I guess 5-6 hours when it happened? I spent the entire day on the rifle range verifying zeros and doing chrono work, and once I was done, I packed up and drove my new Tacoma over to the pistol side. But not before positing a picture of the truck backed up to the shooting bay on Facebook and captioning it "Truck's first range day. Not a single hole in it yet!" Yeah, didn't say anything about me.
So I head on over to the pistol range to meet my friend who had gone over a while before and was just about finishing up. I had enough time to put a few mags through the handgun I brought, packed it up and started walking to sit on the tailgate of the truck. But I stopped and turned around to ask my friend if he remembered how to get to the place where we were going to have lunch. He said "Yep,"
I started to turn back around to go sit on my tailgate and *WHACK* someone hit me in the back of my lower right leg with(this is honestly what I pictured in my head) a broom handle. Or so I thought. Apparently, that's what it feels like when you get hit with a .22LR from close range. Of course, I had no idea I'd been shot. It didn't even occur to me. The first thing that went through my head was "Who did I piss off to deserve that?" I honestly thought someone had hit me with something. So I start looking around and saying "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?! WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" And my friend and the dude shooting next to him were like "What happened???" Then he started laughing, so I immediately thought he was screwing with me. I hadn't reconciled that I'd been shot yet, so I said "Dude, something just whacked me in the leg really fkn hard. That hurt like a sonofabitch. WTF." And that's when I put my foot back on the ground and my lower leg was just dead. I couldn't put any weight on it. Not because it hurt, but because it wouldn't hold me up. So I hopped over to my truck on my good leg and sat down, and that's when my friend started laughing again and calling me a pussy because he thought I had just been hit by a ricochet. And who knows what it was at this point because there was no visible hole in my jeans and no blood...yet.
this next part just added to the confusion. Once I was situated on the tailgate, my buddy says "I'm going to lift your pant leg up and check, OK?" "OK" And as soon as he does, blood squirts out both sides of my right calf. WTF! He IMMEDIATELY puts my pant leg down and starts chuckling "Dude, you got shot!" Me: "Are you FUCKING kidding me." And no sooner than we figured that out, I look over to the right to see where it could have come from and I see some dude laying flat on his back with a few people checking on him. So NOW I'm thinking "Holy shit, there's some motherfucker shooting at people."

NOPE.

Dude on the ground was the one who shot me. He was a big fat dude sitting in a cheap, plastic folding chair, shooting his little Ruger MK3 when the chair collapsed underneath him, sending him tumbling backwards, onto his back where he managed to squeeze a round off right through my freaking leg. WTF. And to top it off, me, my friend and the dude right next to us were the only ones who knew that someone had been shot. EVERYONE was over there seeing if the dude was OK. Luckily, both my friend and the other guy had first aid kits and knew how to use them. My buddy was an AH-64 pilot and the other guy was a Marine Corps Lifesaver.
Once it was determined that someone had been shot, the entire range came over to ogle. There were even off duty paramedics and a retired fire fighter there that day, so everything was under control.

My friend ended up just driving me to the hospital and I was able to walk in with some help. It didn't even hurt that bad. Yet. I left in a wheelchair the next morning. Haha.

Good times.

 

One thing that ive seen happen, even with angled targets, if you hit them hard enough sometimes the steel will spall and spit little razor sharp bits back at you. makes for nasty wounds if it connects.

Thats scary as fuck, that could have gone a lot worse.

 

Right? Considering the guy was about 30' away, only a slight change of angle would have meant I got hit in the torso or head. That fact was not lost on me as I sat in my hospital bed that night. I even had a doctor come in late at night and tell me how lucky I was. Not just because of that, but because the bullet had done so little damage.

Honestly, the most painful part of the experience was when the ER nurse told me to take my shirt off. I was not in good shape at the time

 

You aren't supposed to shoot steel targets with rifle rounds that close. The rounds are travelling super fast. Also it could be the ammo you're using. Steel core and hardest bullets can do that.

 

Had some military reloads from Cabelas I was shooting in my 308 and had a case rupture. Scary feeling feeling that air puff blast around the bolt and hit you in your face.

 

This one's pretty minor compared to the ones above it, but a coupe weeks ago, I somehow got my left thumb popped up behind the slide of my G17 at the range. I still haven't figured out the geometry of it since I'm right handed and basically use a weaver grip, so my left palm is usually under the end of the mag.

All I know for sure is that I felt the impact on my thumb and the gun jammed since I'd stopped it from fully cycling. I'm pretty glad I was just shooting 9mm that night though, since I'm guessing my XD45 would have been a lot more energy coming back and might have done some real damage.

 

When we teach new shooters, we refer to the above as a "self-correcting problem."

I'm glad you were not seriously injured.

 

was teaching a new shooter and he got the glock stamp across his hand despite being warned of said glock stamp....he went back to the marlin 22 after that

 

I'm nowhere close to that new. I've owned this particular glock for almost a year now and put at least 2500 rounds through it before this happened. Plus with having most of my left hand under the bottom of the grip, I really just can't figure out how it was even geometrically possible for my thumb to be where it was on that shot (there is no "why" to figure out since I'd never do it deliberately). Definitely glad I wasn't shooting the 45 that night, the 9mm with a 20lb spring (swapped it out to get a steel guide rod) definitely had a lot less energy in the slide when it hit than the factory XD45 which also has a 20 lb spring.