Friday, September 11, 2015

5 Bad Shooting Range Habits That Might Get You Killed

Whether you elect to get involved in some competitions or not, figure out your own ways to practice malfunction drills until they become automatic. You should never have to stop and ponder how to operate, load, or clear your gun. It needs to be automatic, like (hopefully) using the turn signal in your car.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In South Florida in general and Miami in particular you have the people on the one hand that turn on a turn signal once when they get in the car and leave it on for the duration of their trip, and on the other hand people who are completely unaware of how a turn signal is activated. I guess there may be some overlap between the two groups. Then there are those who, upon seeing your turn signal come on to advise that you're about to change lanes, speed up to close the hole you were about to merge into. Apparently in our local Hispanic community turn signals are seen as a sign of weakness and only displayed by gringos estupidos who can't adjust to life in the capital of South America.

Don't even get me started on their custom of turning on their hazard flashers if its raining.

Want to see something something really scary? Drop by Trail Glades Range on any Sunday afternoon and watch the range staff try to manage a range full of people who are determined to act like 2 year old's.

And that's all I have to say about that!

Chiu ChunLing said...

Range habits are fine, just so long as they aren't your only gun habits.

Being conscious of what other people are doing around you when you or they are firing weapons is just good manners as well as good sense. As long as you drill the habit of keeping your weapon pointed down range rather than waving it around to indicate your wandering attention, it's a range habit everyone should have which translates well into other situations.

All of the rest of these are generally good range habits as long as you're not in the habit of only handling your weapon or training with it at the range. If you have a weapon for home defense, you should train with it in your home more than anywhere else. If you reload, it can even be live fire training with hot-glue boolits and primer-only loads (consider the extra weapon clearing training as a bonus!). If you carry outdoors regularly, then more serious tactical training outside the confines of a range is helpful. And there's always hunting, though perhaps I risk being termed a Fudd for mentioning it (remember, in the woods you're always at risk of having some animal teach you that a rifle is not an ideal melee weapon).