Range Officer

[Blackstuff]

I'm glad I never shoot at Bisley then if visitors are that sloppy with their safety and no one else is checking.

In that photo the round has clearly been wedged in behind the flag, its physically impossible for it to just stay where it is as shown, it isn't even on the extractor/breech face. It would have either fell out of its own accord or when the flag was put in.

How could the person who inserted the flag possibly not see or feel the round as shown while inserting the breech flag is beyond me.

[Mattnall]

I'm glad I never shoot at Bisley then if visitors are that sloppy with their safety and no one else is checking.

Per round shot Bisley is possibly one of the safest places to shoot, especially with the oversight and reporting that inevitably goes on.

How many other ranges around the country with a few club members attending once a month have had 'an incident' and despite a few red faces and maybe a telling off, it never goes beyond the club? Most likely will not happen again with those people but I'm sure it still goes on, and these are not with visitors but those that should know better.

These are the dangerous places to be, not Bisley.

[RDC]

In the extraordinarily tenuous reality of that safety flag situation happening, that round couldn't be chambered

The situation has occurred five times that I know of, and in four of those the round was subsequently chambered and fired.

Iain, are you able to share the data around these five incidents?

Discipline shot, firearm type, individual shooter or as part of a club? In competition? Self-reported? Checked by RCO or not?

None of this information should reveal anything personal about those involved, but could go some way toward highlighting a trend so that others can learn from it. Five (known about) incidents suggest there is a gap in training or procedures somewhere.

[Jorden]

As per last two posts, in the aircraft world there is an anonymous reporting of "incidents" (no names) to highlight trends, perhaps something along those lines could be useful in the shooting world?

[IainWR]

I'm glad I never shoot at Bisley then if visitors are that sloppy with their safety and no one else is checking.

In that photo the round has clearly been wedged in behind the flag, its physically impossible for it to just stay where it is as shown, it isn't even on the extractor/breech face. It would have either fell out of its own accord or when the flag was put in.

How could the person who inserted the flag possibly not see or feel the round as shown while inserting the breech flag is beyond me.

The last occurrence of this type that resulted in a shot being fired at Bisley was approaching 20 years ago. There has been one known occurrence there since; that was detected by correct application of procedures while the firearm was still on the firing point. The others I refer to have occurred overseas.

I assure you that in many modern target rifles a flag will slide smoothly into the breech over a round in the action body at the rear of the loading port, which is on the blind side of the rifle from the firer, and that a round will lie in that position, retained and concealed by the breech flag.

For some reason the much more detailed reply I've just spent an hour writing has vanished. Please accept that anyone who believes that a rifle with a breech flag in is thus necessarily unloaded is wrong.

[Pete]

Blackstuff said: "I'm glad I never shoot at Bisley then if visitors are that sloppy with their safety....."

I've been shooting regularly at Bisley since 2007, (roughly once a fortnight, apart from covid shutdowns), and that certainly wouldn't be the case if I'd ever felt "unsafe"........

I have a very highly developed sense of self-preservation.

Pete