Sparks wrote:

And I may as well start it off with a competitive example I suppose.
The first time I shot a 25 yard card and put ten tens down the range at it in competition, I learnt that you always check your target through the scope when shooting those ten-target cards, no matter how sure you are of where you are on the card...

You think that's bad? I shot the guy next to me's target by accident TWICE while shooting air rifle!

Another one I'm afraid, Came home from target shooting and left my semi auto .22 rifle on bench as I washed my hands and went to boil the kettle. Semiauto was 'mt' but bolt closed and 'mt' mag inserted. Rifle still cocked though. Older brother arrives in for visit, sees rifle picks it up....'Nice rifle'..click...squeezed trigger! Never checked. 'That was a silly thing to do' he said. I agreed. We both learned a very good lesson.

I think this thread could be very good, a kind of confession and purification. Please please please always take care

I've been thinkin about this thread and the more I do the better idea it seems to me to be. I shoot rifle alot but I have loads of friends who shoot shotgun both clay and hunting and I hope they all put up their stories ecause there are some very funny ones and some really scaryones too. Remember 'Hill Street Blues' the guy used to tell the cops going out on the beat to be careful out there. (Which film had the quote 'be careful out there among them english'?) no disrespect to our fellows over the way.
anyway 'nuff digression. What I mean to say is that with the new pistols and that coming back and the fact that we do not have widespread experience in using them can those who have experience with them, from other countries,or army or what ever tell the rest of us how to handle them and what is acceptable PC concerning them. and point out the pit falls and so on. I'm sure we dont want the streets to be like the wild west and I don't want to see my local barman shot just cos he put some guy out or what.

Well Gouda,
thing is folks are admitting they are fallible.Everyone is,you mean to tell us that YOU have never had a close one while shooting??
I have and I openly admit it. To say that arguement that the burrocrats can pick this coloum[even if they know it exists!] for arguements to ban guns is not necessarily true.As Sparks said he got the idea from PILOT magazine,in which pilots tell their stories of close ones or whatever.Does that mean that the FAA or the DOT will use that colum to demand tighter restrictions on issueing a private pilots liscense??No it is actually encouraged so as pilots can learn from mistakes of others.As pilot[read human] error is one of the biggest causes of air disasters.Plus being a pilot is 100% more restricted than gun ownership anyday.Getting a gun lic compared to your commercial ticket or private ticket in ireland is a complete doddle,I can tell you.

There is also a coloum dedicated to this in guns&weapons for law enforcement,a mag that was freely buyable in Easons up to recently.Called cop talk,again it was about cops and the situations they got into dealing with armed crime .
Ditto a coloum on bodygaurding tactics.Now no doubt there are some who would say that that shouldnt be allowed as that might give the"wrong people" ideas.Trouble is "the wrong people" dont generally read magazines to learn things.or they are pro enough to know this as old hat already,and the people whom this information is pertinent to are then denied this learning tool.

[maybe this the reason Easons dont stock it anymore,they were scared this info might be used wrongly.Nanny state knows best again]

Now I suppose if a coloum was published in "Irish Little Boy Racer monthly" or" Arrogant Junior Executive BMW driver".THEN the transport minister might have a ligit arguement,as I think that colum would be blocked solid for years on end with total day to day idiocy and incompetance stories.

Anyway onto my tale.
When I was ten ,my cousin was given an airgun in Germany[back in the seventies an allowable thing].Once an uncle of ours who was the firearms training officer with the local police force took us down to our duck pond for some practise at floating bits of wood and a good talking to on the weighty matter of gun saftey,their dangerousness and responsibility of use and possesion of air weapons by youngsters.After delivering this solmen sermon,he said that now lets have some fun ,lets spook a bothersome duck that kept swimming between our floating targets.His idea was to put a shot in front of the duck in the water.Unfortunely he scored a direct hit in the ducks head,thussly ending the ducks existance and depriving his sister in law of a beloved pet and good egg layer.After the deceased had been retrived and brought shamefacedly to his sister in law,whereupon a sound Germanic bollicking was issued,uncle was orderd to pluck,gut and prepare said duck for next days dinner.A disagreeable task on a hot day in July.Uncle, not to let a educational opportunity go,promptly lectured us again on gun saftey and irresponsible use.To cap it,the story got back to the police force whereupon uncle was botherd by butts of jokes for many a year about duck hunting without appropiate liscenses and firearm saftey.

I learned five things from this;
1]Air rifle pellets of .177 cal even out to 50plus meters are deadly to ducks
2]Dont shoot at things you dont intend to hit or kill.
[3]Even professionals in their field will screw up and make mistakes
4]Dont lark around with guns,even somthing as "harmless" as an air rifle,deact etc.
5]Germans,even they are in the total wrong ,if they are older than you, they are always right,and will labour a point to death


"They say one learns from one's mistakes.I prefer to learn from the mistakes of others as it is less costly,and a lot less embarassing or painful!"
Otto von Bismarck

Sparks wrote:

Three new ones to add to the list, more from a competitive side than a safety side;

Showed up in UCDRC for the most recent air rifle match, having gone through my checklist that morning for my gear. Had all required bits'n'bobs. Then tried to assemble the rifle, only to realise that the key to the trigger lock was sitting on my bedside table at home. Happily it was only 15 miles away, and I was after dropping off other people for the competition so I had two hours to retrieve it, but lesson learnt; your checklist is a living document and it should take into account even the blindingly obvious stuff...

(Also, helping out the rifle club by ferrying juniors to a match can pay off )



Shot in Bisley for the first time for the airgun championships last week. I'd been to Bisley before and walked around the air rifle range (it's not used much for air rifle outside of competitions ) to get familiar with it. "Hoo boy", thinks I, "you've got the drop on this match pressure yoke, haven't you?". Day of the competition arrives, and it's the same range - only now there are 200-odd people on it, shooting, range officering, spectating, adjudicating, there's Chris Hector a few spots away (the best male air rifle shooter in the UK at present), there's so-and-so, and there's another big name, and now we have to go through equipment control and on and on it went - by the time I got to the firing line, I was so thrown out of it, I dropped twenty points off my average.
Lesson learnt - match pressure is at it's most dehabilitating when you think you have it beaten and don't take the standard precautions (having a match plan, having contingency plans, knowing where your backup and coaches are and using them, and so on).



And lastly, on the trip home, we got through Gatwick (while being observed from the balcony by some gentlement with MP5 submachine guns - keep the fingers outside the trigger guard, would you lads? - just in case we took our single-shot air rifles and tried to go on a rampage in the airport :rolleyes: ) and even got a little congratulatory announcement on the plane on the way back, so everything was going swimmingly and we were all relaxing and letting the guard down - and then we caught the baggage handler throwing our rifle cases off the conveyor belt and onto the carrying case. And I mean throwing - you could hear the impact clear across the baggage reclaim area, it was that bad. Even after yelling at the man that those boxes were worth €2500 apiece, he kept on going...
Anyway, one of the brand new cases was destroyed as a result. Lock busted, a fracture on the end - but at least the rifle was still intact. Multiple lessons learnt:

• You're not home until you're home!
• Send someone from the team to escort the rifles off the plane or meet them as early along the chain as possible in future.
• Check your cases and rifles in baggage reclaim, in case they've been damaged. Otherwise, how do you prove it was baggage handling that smashed them?
• Get a very sturdy case for international travel and preferably one that you wouldn't cry over if it got smashed, as it probably will.
• When packing a rifle for international travel, even for a foam-lined case, bubblewrap is your friend and ally. Especially since the barrel/action and the stock will have been seperated to prevent differential thermal contraction from stripping out the bedding bolts!

Firearms regularly draw this kind of attention from baggage handlers, or so my informed sources tell me, a lot of them are apparently anti-shooting. Also,if you have stickers,markings on the outside of the case such as eley,Anschutz etc. it only serves to advertise that it contains firearms. Some people put innocous stickers or no marking at all and have found the case treated slightly better. I also feel that handlers compete among themselves as to who can throw heavy cases furthest from the conveyor without spilling the contents.

I recently witnessed a troubling incident at the range over here. There was a novice (I presume) handgun shooter at the station to the right of me. He had just picked up a brand new Sig P226 in 9mm and had a more experienced shooter friend at the station on his right. Shooter obously had taken apart the handgun for some reason because he had forgotten to close the takedown lever.
He pops in a full magazine and hits the slide release, the slide moves forward and chambers a round but because the takedown lever is still open the slide see its chance and makes a break for freedom taking its sidekick the 9mm round with it.
From the corner of my eye I see a brand new Sig slide fly through the air with gusto, I almost thought it was going to reach paper and put an impressive hole in the target. But alas it quickly falls to earth and goes click clink clink as it hits the concrete and bounces around.

Oh boy did i get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach because I had an identical handgun sitting in front of me and I shuddered at the thought of the scrapes and gashes, I had to turn away