Play safe!
by Harley Ayre
No matter how long you've been shooting, it's never wrong to discuss safety, so today I thought I'd review some oddball situations you may not have thought about.
Range safety
Just because they're quiet doesn't mean they don't hurt!
This one falls into the realm of bizarre. A field target match is one of the quietest shooting events you will ever see. Golf sounds like a riot compared to FT. And, shooters get lazy because they aren't hearing the sounds of gun discharges. I have seen shooters walk downrange in the middle of a match to fix a stuck target without announcing their intentions! At my FT club, we usually shut down both adjacent lanes and sometimes more whenever someone has to go downrange. No one moves until the line is cold!
Gun handling!
A gun is always loaded until you prove that it isn't! I have seen people cock airguns then, realizing they weren't supposed to do that, put the muzzle on their shoe and pull the trigger! I once saw a man hold his hand over the muzzle to catch the pellet when it came out! He said the rifle had a weak mainspring, and it wouldn't even hurt. I bet it did in the emergency room when the surgeon had to remove the pellet from his hand!
More gun handling!
Watch that muzzle! And watch where others point their muzzles! I once saw a guy take a pellet in the side of his head at a gun show because three tables away some guy was engrossed in trying to make a sale and he, "Didn't know the gun was loaded!" Fortunately, he wasn't demonstrating an AirForce Condor, or he might have faced manslaughter charges instead of a minor lawsuit.
Still more gun handling!
Keep your gol-darned finger off the trigger until you are ready to shoot! I know people who habitually hold their finger on the trigger of every gun they handle. One of them just shot himself in the forearm with a .22 caliber Korean air rifle! That's the equivalent of being hit by a .22 short! The pellet went 6" up his arm.
Goofy repairs
A man told me he was attempting to unsolder a Benjamin CO2 pistol using a propane torch to melt the solder. Well, he unsoldered it all right. The gun blew up and disassembled itself very quickly. You see, CO2 doesn't like 400 degree temperatures, and he left a full powerlet in the gun while he did the work!
And the winner is...!
The moron who filled his precharged air rifle with medical oxygen! Yeah, it's cheap when you "borrow" it from the hospital where you work, and yeah, it's available at real high pressures. But it's OXYGEN, folks! Oxygen is the No. 1 supporter of combustion, which is why our Darwin awardee was seeing a blue flame at the muzzle every time he shot! He was just shots away from needing the services of his employer when it was patiently explained to him that what he was doing wasn't such a bright idea. The real irony of the whole thing is that this guy was an orderly who was responsible for enforcing safe practices on the ward where he worked. DUH!
I got a million of 'em, but these should have proved my point. We airgunners have a pretty good track record going for us. Please don't spoil it by becoming my next anecdote!
5 Comments:
Hi Harley Ayre,
why don´t you tell us more of these lapses? The ones you told us are really bad ideas, but there are small faults every one of us has done, sometimes without recognizing it. Maybe it will sharpen our minds if we read what really can go wrong.
markus
markus,
I don't mind doing that, but I don't want to bore the other readers. I may do another blog with them, but here's one for you now.
My wife was shooting field target and a man came walking down the path that connected all the shooting lanes. When he came to the lane where my wife was aiming at a target, he walked in front of her! Only a quick, "Cease fire!" prevented him from being shot!
He wasn't a shooter - just a visitor, and the quiet of the event lulled him to forget what people were doing.
Harley
Markus asked about "small faults" so I'll share mine. A wasp entered my home a couple of weeks ago seeking refuge from the 40F temperature outside and I quickly got my Crosman 1077 out when it(wasp) stayed rather still on the glass patio door. I shot it point blank thinking the CO2 blast will kill it. To my surprise and horror, a flattened pellet bounced off the glass. Thanks god I was aiming at an angle and lucky it was tempered glass and there was nobody else around. Obviously, I forgot to unload my gun before storing.
There was another incident when I shot myself in the finger tip trying to see if there was a pellet lodged in the barrel when the CO2 cartridge was not pierced properly. Hurted like hell. I wonder if I am the only usually "fairly intellegent" person that had to learn from stupid mistakes like that.
Dumb Shooter,
You are one of the very few who will admit to doing dumb things. Two days ago I was playing with a breakbarrel under test and I pulled the trigger without checking whether it was cocked. Apparently the rifle had been in my office for a week in the cocked state. No pellet inside, fortunately, but that was just dumb luck.
Harley
Hi Harley,
Talk about quick response. Didn't know you're online. Just want to let you know that I have signed up for a firearm safety course next week. Didn't want to rely on luck all the time.
Dumb Shooter
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