I just happened to look behind me and seen she had her 12 ga shotgun pointed right at me while finishing reloading. We stopped shooting immediately and she was never invited to shoot again.
This reminds me of one at my place.
My best buddy is a gun aficionado, super safety conscious, teaches my kids to shoot better... letting them use all of his own guns and ammo... fairly regularly. He gets joy out of teaching them and others. My kids call him Uncle Darin. I can teach them basic safety, but not how to be a technically proficient shooter like this guy can.
So, one day, after he told me about it, he invites a guy from our church, the father of a young army private, to come to my place so the young soldier can practice his marksmanship on some steel targets my friend put out at 50 and 100 yds. The kid is going for some sort of 'high-level' certification or something. My friend is teaching him techniques with his own .308 rifle. Nothing unusual. The kid seems to know about safety and how to manage the firearm and all.
(I start sweating just thinking about what happened next.) After the solider had fired several magazines and several walks downrange to examine the targets, talking, learning, etc... they stop shooting, set the guns down and my friend is walking downrange to prop a target or something while the solider was standing near the table with the rifle on it. None of us thought he would touch it with a man walking downrange, but while none of us could fathom it, the boy got the idea to fiddle with the rifle on the table. None of us had our 'ears' on. When that .308 discharged on the table it wasn't pointed at my friend, but it was the general direction. I can still feel that boom in my bones.
This friend of mine is the most even-tempered guy you'll ever meet, but he was so mad he literally turned shades of red and purple. He didn't even have to yell at the solider as he shrugged over like a dog that had been whipped. My friend was madder than I've ever seen him and his color stayed red for a long time. I've lived through some traumatic circumstances in my life, and I'm pretty good at turning the fear off immediately, but 'wow.' My friend had seen his life flash before his eyes unexpectedly. Part of his anger may have been that he had let his guard down. Can you imagine what would have happened to this solider at a military range if he had an accidental discharge there? The kid would be in big trouble.
I guess the moral of the story is: you positively CANNOT be too careful.
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When *I* was young, gun safety was drilled into me. I won't even let a toy gun be pointed at somebody. When I was about 13, standing behind a clay pigeon thrower that my dad was re-setting, the 16-guage Remington 870 in my hands, with the safety on, discharged for no reason at all. (There have been stories about those Remington firing pins) My dad knew the gun would be pointed in a safe direction so he wasn't even alarmed. He saw how white my face was and said, "well, there's your gun safety lesson for the day." I still remember it like it was yesterday.
