It’s always a fun day on the range until…It’s not.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing right in front of me. I was literally within inches of him as he rotated the muzzle of the cocked 9mm pistol up under his chin with his finger on the trigger. I found myself reaching in with my left hand pushing the gun away from under his chin and grabbing it with my thumb in-between the hammer and the slide. I’m not sure if he was resisting or not but I ended up hitting him on the top of his right wrist to break his grip on the pistol. I now had complete control of the weapon and with it back in a safe direction I quickly made it safe. All the while this was going on, my shooter had no reaction or expression on his face and my thoughts were turning towards my loaded sidearm in my holster. Thankfully he either didn’t think about it or he thought better of wrestling with me for my own gun. Either way, I was truly lucky!
After I set the gun down, and with more animation in my reaction than would be considered professional, I asked him if he realized what he had just done. Nothing. It was just more of that blank stare. I then asked him what he was thinking and what was it he intended to do. More of the same expressionless stare. He then walked away from my table as if he was clueless as to what had just happened.
I cut him off from the range and turned him over to the Chief Instructor who spoke briefly with him and then removed him from the range.
It does make me wonder about this type of thing. I’m certainly not qualified to comment on this gentleman’s mental health or his mindset. What I know is the facts as I perceive them and after a few nights of sleep, a better recollection of the event has brought me to write this. Obviously being an eyewitness and participant in the event will make my story circumspect at best. However, is this what we now have to worry about on the training ranges?
Tragically, suicides on public ranges periodically happen. I can’t recall hearing about a suicide in a structured class. Perhaps there is no real reason to be concerned when dealing with students of the gun? It is the gray area that is cause for pause and evaluation. I think it is possible that we, as professional firearms instructors, can get set in our minds that our students would never intentionally want to harm themselves while in our class. The risk may exist, but it is so small that it begs to be ignored. Where we may fall short is when we are taken outside of our daily training routines and are given something like a full-auto shoot, charity event of company team building outing that we should take a step back and reset our minds.
We’re not dealing with students. We’re dealing with a broad range of people with a vast number and type of problems in their lives. We see them for a few moments and have to make a determination if they are capable of handling a potentially deadly situation. My lesson learned here is simple. Always take the time to reset and evaluate. There were about 60 people there that day. 59 wanted to have fun. I have no idea what was going through the mind of that 1 other gentleman. I probably never will.
Remember to always be aware of your surroundings and never take anything for granted or make assumptions. Stay Safe and Keep Training!
At a gun shop&range I used to frequent when I lived in Iowa, a year or two back, a guy walked in and asked to see a .45… When the clerk looked away for a moment, he slipped a bullet from his pocket into the gun, and immediately committed suicide at the gun counter. I knew the clerk behind the counter from having been in there so many times over several years. Hearing that was probably one of the most horrible things … ever.
Well done Scott for having the state of mind to disarm the guy. Another scenario is if the ‘student’ had to turn the weapon on innocent people at the range… You know what happens in these office environments!
Good job on disarming the guy. This particular sort of behavior is the height of rudeness, as is “suicide by cop”. One can easily do away with oneself without involving a bunch of other people. I hope that the company who set up the outing fired him.
Having worked a public range before, I’ve had my fair share of similar incidents. If there is one skill that job helped me develop significantly, it was learning to read people. I already did pretty well with it before, but when your customers often have loaded guns, it makes you pay particular attention to detail.
Some people are much more laid back about it, and only on edge on occasion. Me, personally, anytime I’m on the range, anytime I’m with students or a class, anytime I’m in that environment period, I always try to be on the “edge of my seat”, alert, to the point of being “edgy”. Not sure if that’s the right way to describe it, but basically just that I’m always on edge. It’s usually not apparent to the students by my demeanor, but I’m effectively expecting something to go wrong at any second. I’ve had some people tell me that’s too exhausting, and you can’t do that all the time. Personally, I’d rather be exhausted after class and get some good rest, then being a bit less alert in class and something going wrong.
One of the last few people (before I moved on to another job) that caught my eye with having odd body language on the range, weeks later went on to go active shooter with an AK47 at a local University…thankfully only taking his own life. That really drove the point home for me to keep focusing on “reading” everyone on the range as often as possible.
http://mentalillnesspolicy.org/studies/state-standards-involuntary-treatment.html
http://www.dhhs.nh.gov/dcbcs/nhh/eligibility.htm
Scott,
The above are a couple of resources which I quickly found on an internet search.
I realize not every state, locale, person, or LEO will treat a given situation the same.
As a California LEO, I’ve had the duty to commit several people to an initial mental health hold over the years. From what you’ve described, the subject person sounds like a highly potential candidate.
As you implied, perhaps firearms instructors would benefit from training in this area.
By the way, that was great observation and action on your part!
15 years ago when I started my career, no one wore their vest on range day. We were religious about it on the street, but not the range. However, the FIs were. They always had on those red FI vests (with armor). I guess they already knew something. Well, finally someone said, we know for sure that guns are fired on the range, so it’s probably a good idea to wear vests here. Plus you are training more like you work. So it became maditory for shooters to wear their armor during training. That’s a side note to this. Now I’m an FI. You have to be ready for anything. The range is your “street” and bad stuff can happen there too.
I echo what Travis said above. I have worked as an RO at a public rental range (no license required) and my ability to read people was honed even further by my experience there.
I have been in a similar situation with all different reactions ranging from shock and fear because they don’t realize what they had done, to a girl giggling about it even after I told her she almost just died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
What can I say? People are generally stupid.
Especially when teaching a class with people I don’t “know,” you gotta keep an eye on everyone. Not long after this article, Chris Kyle lost his life in a range shooting. I guess I don’t trust anybody – at least not in an open event like that. In a more formal class, you get some time to feel people out. It sounds like you were wary of this guy because of the signals he was sending.
The mentally ill are so unpredictable. We had a guy a few months back drive three hours to our city after booking a flight in a hot air balloon with another dozen people. When they got up to 5000 feet, he tried to climb out of the basket and jump. The other passengers held onto him for 20 minutes until they were able to land. Talk about planning it out. I don’t know what happened to running the car in the closed garage. Sometimes people need to drag a whole bunch of others into their plan. Pretty selfish actually. You just never know when or where it could happen.
After something like that happens, the default response should be to call 911 immediately. Suicide attempts are extremely serious, and an emergency room will have rooms specifically to hold patients likely to commit suicide (padded walls, no outlets, no ceiling vents to hang anything from etc…) If you or someone you know is going to attempt suicide or just has, call 911 and have that person taken to the ER.