Hey guys, it's Kari with License2Kari and welcome to my home range in San Antonio, Texas. This is, we are at Bingo's Mercantile, and today we're going to talk about range etiquette and what to expect when you're going into the range and some protocols to follow.
Sign the waiver
So one of the first things that you'll have to do when you're going to arrange, especially for the first time, is you'll have to sign a waiver and we have our waiver set up here on these little kiosks. So you'll go through, you'll sign the waiver. It has all the range rules for that particular range on the waiver itself. So make sure you're following that and reading that as you go. So these have to be filled out for us once a year, so they're good for a year. So now we're going to head over to the counter. Now if you want to rent a gun because you don't have one or you just want to try different ones quick, awesome. Most ranges do that. So you see here, we have a lot of different guns for rent. I brought my own gun today in my case, so you notice it's in a case and not on a holster.
Your Gun is in a holster
Now you can come into the range as long as your gun is in a holster or in a case. We can't just come in, Hey, I'm here with my guns. Alright, so we have to have it in a case. Now, if I was renting a gun, I would get something like this, a bin that they would put my gun in, my ear protection, my eye protection, and maybe some ammunition of course if we need that. But since we're not renting a gun, because that's a video for another day. So we're going to leave that here and we're going to use my gun and we're going to take it inside the range. So they'll say, go ahead and pick out a target to take. So look at all the plethora of targets that we have to select from which one shall I choose? Let's do this nice bright orange OID target.
Focus on your range
Okay, this one looks good. We'll take that one with us. You notice this sign over here it says I and ear protection required beyond this point. So before we head in, we're going to put our eyes and ears on. So I have these specially made because it's special. I'm going to wear my earbuds that are specifically designed and made for my ear canals. So they're going to be electronic, which electronic is really great to have any kind of electronic earmuffs or because that way you can hear people talking, but it drowns out the sound of the gunfire. Now children or maybe people that just are nervous about the sound, the loud bang, we often suggest that they double up on ear protection. So maybe they wear little foamy earplugs along with the earmuffs to double up perfectly fine. So now we've got our ears on. Then we need our eyes, eyes and our bag and we're ready to go. In the passageway, we have three ranges, three bays in our range. So we're going to go to number two and we're going to head in. Now, you'll notice when you come in now we have the whole range to ourself right now. Yay. You look over here,
Range rules
You see the range rules. Now range rules will vary for different ranges, so you want to make sure that you've kind of read over those, especially when you signed the waiver. But here they are posted in the range as well. Okay? So another thing where you're going to the range is you want to wear high collared shirts, okay? And closed toed shoes, no sandals, okay? Because again, we have the brass going everywhere. So inevitably if you wear a low cut shirt, ladies or a V-neck, or this happens to men too, those brass casings will go down for shirt. If they do, we don't have our gun and we're not like, oh my gosh, with that brass down my shirt, set the gun down and then clear the brass. If you need to just be very conscious of that ed baseball cap, yes, that's a good idea too to deflect the casings as well if you so choose. So we're going to pick a bench. So I'm going to go right over here to this one. Oh look, someone already put my humanoid up for me. That's so nice. I'm going to go ahead and set my bag up on the bench. And we want our
Gun already facing down range even when we unpack it for the first time. So I'm going to show you, this is really cool. A girl in a gun makes these bags and you can get 'em on their website, but the muzzle in my bag, it's already showing that the muzzle is pointed down range. So if you don't have a bag like this, what I would suggest is maybe putting a piece of tape with an arrow on your gun case or gun bag or doing a sharpie or something like that to indicate where the muzzle is facing. Okay? We're going to open it up, take it out.
My slide is already open, I'm going to lay it down. You want to have the chamber side open and up. That way any range safety officer coming by could see that your gun is clear and more importantly it's clear. So we set out our magazine, set out our ammunition, and then we can just put everything else out of the way so that we don't have any clutter. I'm just going to set it down here on this handy dandy bench. Okay, so we're all set up here, but I want to cover the safety rule, the universal safety rules if you will. The first one is treat every gun as if it is loaded. So we're going to show respect to every gun, regardless of whether we're super confident that it's clear and it's empty, we're going to treat it with respect as if it were loaded.
The second rule is keeping your muzzle pointed in a safe direction. Alright, so you notice my muzzle is already pointed down range, okay? It's not turned to the side because then I'm muzzling, whoever's shooting next to me. So we want to keep it pointed down range. The third safety rule is keeping our finger off the trigger and outside the trigger guard until we've made the decision to shoot. And I'll demonstrate that in a second. And then the fourth rule is know your target and what's beyond and around. Alright? So again, what's beyond us is just metal. It's a metal trap. It's meant to catch the bullets. There's no cows back there, there's no tractors going by, tumbleweeds, whatever. So for an indoor range, the most important two rules are muzzle direction, keeping a pointed down range and trigger discipline, keeping that finger off the trigger until you've decided to shoot. Okay, so now I've got my magazine, I have my ammunition, I'm going to load it up with, let's just do five rounds. 1, 2, 3. You notice how I use the bench as leverage,
So I'm not holding it up here, I'm keeping it down. Alright, so I've got my ammunition in, I'm going to pick up the gun, keeping it pointed down, range finger off the trigger. I turn it to the side so I can see what I'm doing. Put the magazine in, wrap the slide, and we are hot, we are ready to go. Now once you have loaded your gun, you do not set it back down, okay? We don't ever want to set a loaded gun back down on the bench. So if I needed to take a break, I would do all the steps to remove the magazine, remove the ammunition out of the gun, there we go. And then I could set it down. So that's very important to do that. Alright, so let's reload it. Alright, so we're going to get ready and we're going to shoot. I'm going to make that decision in a minute, but I have my finger off the trigger for now. All right, take a look real quick at the target for a second. You notice where the X is? It's kind of in his stomach, okay? That would be a gut shot and that's not going to be an effective hit. When we're aiming at a target, we should be aiming for the high center chest thoracic cavity. So I'm actually going to be aiming for more in the eight, right? Okay, because upper chest, alright, here we go.
I'm empty slides locked back. Now I can remove my magazine and we've got an empty chamber and set the gun back down and I could reload and keep going if I needed to. Okay? So I just shot my gun, but my friend Bob over here, he came to the range with me. I know you didn't see him come in, but he snuck in. Alright, so he's over there and he's shooting a gun that I think I would like to try. So if you want to shoot someone else's gun in the range, that's fine as long as you have their permission. You don't want to touch anyone else's equipment without their permission, of course. So instead of Bob bringing me his gun, because the deal is guys, you should not be transferring guns from one bay to the next. You're going to take your body and you're going to go to Bob's gun. Okay, I'm going to go and he's left his gun on the bench. Let's take a look. Ooh, nice Bob, a revolver. Okay, so you notice we have it in a safe mode right now because with revolvers, just like with the semi-auto, we had the chamber slide locked open with the chamber side up for revolvers. When you are clear you have the cylinder up and that way we can look through and see that it's empty. Okay, so let's load. Bob, can I use your gun? Sure. Okay, thanks. Alright, so we're going to load it up.
Let's just do, let's just do six rounds. That's what this holds just for fun. Alright, so I've got my ammunition, I'm going to close it up and let's check it out.
And then when I clear it, I'm going to push the cylinder. I'm going to push the ejection rod and I'm going to knock all those out over the bench and then it's clear again. Yes, we'll set it down. Alright, so now let's talk about ceasefire. What if you see something that is not safe? What are you going to do? Anyone when they're shooting on the lines can call a ceasefire. It doesn't matter. Okay, anyone can call it. It doesn't have to be a range safety officer. What are some reasons that we might need to call a ceasefire? One might be if you see someone reaching under the bench to retrieve some shiny object cease fire because that is not allowed. Do not reach under the bench to get anything that drops later on. You can retrieve it with one of the little scooper thingies or something, but don't reach underneath.
What if someone drops their gun?
What if someone drops their gun? Again? Cease spire. What if you see someone's finger on the trigger and it's not pointed in a safe direction? Cease spire if someone's pointed that way or someone's pointing that way, ceasefire. So those are a couple of things to look for. Okay, so we're still on the range, we're the only ones out here, so I'm going to walk forward, but again, this would not be allowed if there were any shooters obviously on the range. So I want to talk about the targets. So when you're shooting any targets on the range, especially these humanoid type targets, one rule to follow is don't try to hit head shots less than 10 yards away. Why? Because you see all these holes that is from people not paying attention and not keeping their muzzle down range. So if we have our target less than 10 yards and we're shooting headshots, you could inadvertently shoot the ceiling, which we don't want to do.
So just shoot the thoracic cavity or whatever you're going to shoot in this section here. Don't shoot up high so that you don't damage the range. Okay, so we are done shooting. We had some excellent target practice today. So now I'm going to put the equipment away. So we get our bag out again. Your bag should be right there. Our muzzle is going to be pointed down range and we're going to put our empty firearm into the bag with our magazine, place it in the gun case with our ammunition. So before I leave, we want to leave things as we found them. Did your mom teach you those kind of rules? She should. Okay, so what we're going to do is we're going to take a little broom and we're just going to sweep up any loose casings around our area. See that It's actually very therapeutic.
Informative for New Shooter
I enjoy it. Alright, so we are done for the day and I hope this was very informative for you, especially if you're a new shooter, you're coming to the range for the first time. These are some things to follow. We checked in, we signed our waiver, we got our gun, our rental gun, if we needed it, we had our gun in its bag entering the range. We had our eye and ear protection on before we came in. We got in, we had our muzzle pointed down range already in the bag. Got everything out, got the ammunition, did some shooting. Pew. Pew P, but they'll shoot like that. Shoot pew, shoot. Alright, and then we were done. So then we swept up our mess and we're good to go. So I hope you guys enjoyed this today. It's been a pleasure. And come visit me here at bucking do's if you're ever in the area and we'll see you soon. Thank you. Thanks for checking out today's episode. I want to hear from you, so please leave a comment and don't forget to subscribe and share with others that you think would enjoyed as well.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIC4gXdVDRE
Credit: Kari Grayson, License2Kari
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