Update 10/11/18:

The two men who attempted to take a selfie while at a gun range, with one of the men directly pointing his firearm at his friend’s chest for the picture, have been banned for life.

According to Yahoo, Top Gun Range manager Kyle Harrison decided to post the video on Facebook with the hope that people would learn a valuable lesson about gun safety.

Harrison told Houston’s Fox 26, “It makes your heart sink when you see that video. You think it’s going to turn out much worse than it did. Luckily, we have good staff that took care of that quickly.”

In a Facebook post, Top Gun Range thanked the safety officer who removed the men from the range and also explained that the men were talked to and told that they will not be allowed to come back.

Great job from our Range Safety Officer in stopping and addressing a safety violation on the range. The former customer brought in his own weapon for him and his friend to shoot. They were given a safety brief and still broke range rules once they went out to shoot. After they were promptly removed from the range, we covered which rules they broke and then banned them for life from the range. We take safety very seriously here at Top Gun Range, and we pride ourselves in having the best staff in Texas.

***Original Post***

The basic rules of firearm safety seem pretty straightforward. If you explain them to people who are unfamiliar with firearms, they’ll often nod their head and say, “Oh, yeah. Of course.”

I mean, it makes sense for people to not point guns at themselves or others. They think that only an idiot would think otherwise, but then you see videos like this:

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.register.77/videos/2082711588435442/

The description from Facebook:

**** FIREARMS SAFTY ****
1. Always assume a firearm to be loaded
2. Never point a firearm at anything unless you are willing to kill or destroy
3. Finger off the trigger until your ready to fire
4. Know your targets foreground and background

These are not just things we say, they are for a reason.

I want to give a special shout to Scott at Top Gun shooting range. How he handle this situation was amazing.

*** I didn’t not post this video to bash the 2 individuals, this was to praise the range officer who saved the day. We salute you.

Frankly, it was fortunate that a staff member was there and reacted the way he did. Yes, he was forceful. Yes, in a lot of instances, manhandling someone like that would be wrong.

This isn’t one of those instances.

I’m sorry, but this moron points a gun at his buddy for a selfie? Unless it was a water pistol, you don’t do that kind of crap. Especially since it looks like the dipstick’s finger was on the trigger. That was a tragedy waiting to happen and thus brought that particular response. Frankly, if the range officer had stomped the proverbial mudhole into the guy, I’d be hardpressed to find fault with him.

After all, that kind of stupid can be fatal.

To make matters worse, though, we don’t know that this was a new shooter. I’d like to believe it is, but I’ve seen plenty of “experienced” gun owners do similarly braindead things. They’re convinced that they know what they’re doing.

Now, keep this in mind the next time a range safety officer seems to be crawling you for something you think is stupid. Sure, this doesn’t happen to everyone, but if it does, take a step back and think for a moment. Did you do something that might have been looked at as unsafe, even from an odd angle?

Even if you didn’t, understand that you may also be the latest guy there after hours and hours of people like these guys coming through the range. There might be a reason the RSO is just a bit touchy, you know? Try to cut the guy some slack.

The gentlemen above, Scott, did a fantastic job and no one was hurt, thankfully. It could have gone the other way very easily, and I’m glad that it didn’t.

While it looks like both men were ejected from the range, they both walked out of the range under their own power and without an armed escort. That situation could easily have resulted in one leaving in a body bag and another under arrest for manslaughter.