Shocking Video — Fatality Barely Averted
This video will give you chills (starting at about the 0:25 mark). We need to remember to follow all the firearms safety rules, and apply them all the time. At the range, all it takes is one brief moment of inattention to create a life-threatening situation. Never assume the downrange area is safe. Use your own eyes and ears.
This video shows a competitor shooting a stage at an action pistol match. He starts when instructed by the Range Safety Officer (RSO). But unbeknownst to both RS0 and competitor, a volunteer is downrange working on targets. Watch carefully. At 0:27 the shooter sweeps left to right, engaging a paper silhouette target to his right. Then, at 0:30, as he begins a mag change, his head turns downrange. A few yards away is a white-shirted range worker! The shooter yells “Hey what’s going on?!”
What’s going on indeed… The RSO should have ensured that nobody was downrange before the shooter even stepped up to the firing line. If other competitors standing to the side had been alert, they might have seen the worker changing targets and called for a halt. And the target-worker himself — even if he was wearing earmuffs, he should have noticed that live fire had commenced just yards away…
We also have to wonder about the stage design. This set-up made it very difficult to see downrange. The white panels (see 0:10-0:20) definitely hid the target worker from view. In hindsight, given the way the stage was laid out, this was truly an “accident waiting to happen”. It’s fortunate that no one got injured in this incident. But this chilling video provides a lesson to all shooters — “Safety First”.
How could this “near-fatality” have been averted? Post your comments below.
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Tags: Pistol, safety, Shocking Video
Remind me to NEVER go to that range!
It appears that there are dust puffs downrange when the shooter is not shooting. I believe that there is another shooter in this stage along with a separate rso, scorer and the guy we see pasting targets.
I watch Pursuit and Outdoor Channel on Direct TV and am stunned about how careless they are day after day with gun handling.
We check chambers even if we just saw someone checking the same chamber.
When they pass guns around they are just chatting and waving and chatting and waving.
The target changers should stand with the rso or no shoot till the area is secured. A brain might help.
How the range officer let someone go down range is beyond me. On top of being lucky that they saw the man on the range, he was fortunate that he wasn’t hit with a stray round bouncing off a target.
They ought to call it rapid fire plinking as that is all it is.
Brilliant idea for the helper to be wearing a white shirt the same color as the targets as well! !
they should have a board that the staff lock on to with a padlock before moving down range. Its easy to see if there is a lock on the board for the ro. then when they return they remove the lock.
It gives a kind of a new meaning to a “no shoot”… But it seems what saves them is they have arranged the targets so the shooter always sees the backstop, there is no panel behind any target – on purpose or not. To me that is one of the “golden rules”, if you cannot see where your bullet will land, dont shoot.
Maybe incorporating a RO position in an elevated vantage point would be beneficial. It would allow full view of the entire shooting area when using stages that require limited shooter and ground level RO fields of view.
“They ought to call it rapid fire plinking as that is all it is.”
I wonder if there are people shooting other disciplines that think bench rest is for people that cant hold a rifle skilfully enough, with out resting it on a bench, to hit anything?
The safety issue should never have happened, that aside, I think its foolish to knock another guys legitimate discipline .
This is a USPSA match. There are very specific rules laid out by the USPSA to be followed to ensure the range is safe, as well as specific range commands the RO is to use for each shooter. After the run is finished, and the RO issues the appropriate commands, the shooter shows clear and holsters. At that time, the RO is supposed to call the range clear and only THEN allow people down range to score and paste the targets. Once targets have all been pasted, the RSO is SUPPOSED to make sure all heads are accounted for, in that no one from his squad is still down range, before he starts the next shooter. This is where things fell apart. The stage design did not help any, but ultimately it boils down to the responsibility of the RO/RSO. Period.
The RSO must check downrange to verify that there is nobody downrange especially in this case where downrange is cluttered with targets and obstacles.
Make sure the range officers don’t wear white shirts. They are too similar to the silhouettes!
Looks like the 8th target the shooter engages was the closest to hitting the worker, you can see by the down range dust that they hit in the far right corner of the pit nearest the worker. I’m surprised the potential victim didn’t notice that and call out a cease fire immediately.