An older r/guns thread asking for range horror stories went downhill fast once people started piling in with the stuff they had actually seen. One shooter talked about a guy committing suicide in the lane next to his friend with a rented pistol, and said it happened while the friend’s girlfriend was there for her first time shooting. He also said a 9-year-old boy and his dad were right there on the other side and saw the whole thing. That alone was enough to set the tone for the thread. It was not people griping about bad manners. It was people unloading the kind of range memories that stick with you.
Another older post had the same feel. A shooter said it was the first time he had ever left a range because he genuinely felt unsafe. He wrote that he and his buddy packed up and left after watching enough nonsense to decide the day was over, even though they had already gotten a couple hours of shooting in. He said he was angry about it and probably would not be going back to that range. It was a short post, but it hit because every shooter reading it knew exactly what that moment feels like — when the fun part is gone and you are only thinking about getting out of there clean.
Another old thread about bad range experiences kept the same mood going. One commenter said a friend had been sent to the hospital after a ricochet incident, and another person responded with the kind of reply that only shows up when somebody’s story sounds too stupid to be made up: if this has happened more than once and already put someone in the hospital, why are you still going there? The answer came back that the latest trip was his last after “3 ricos.” That is the kind of line that tells you a place has gone way past mildly sketchy.
What made those older threads stick is that a lot of the stories ended the same way. People did not stay and argue. They did not tough it out. They grabbed their gear and left because the range stopped feeling like a place to shoot and started feeling like a place where somebody else’s stupidity might get them hurt. Once a thread fills up with that kind of story, the takeaway is pretty plain: bad range behavior is annoying right up until the moment it stops being annoying and starts feeling dangerous.
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