My thanks to Jason for submitting this story.
In 1993 I was lucky enough to travel with two other New Zealanders to the UIT World Cup in Los Angeles. The shooting was held at the 1984 Olympic ranges in Chino.
During the first couple of days we though we would get some training done. I was only shooting Rapid Fire so did all of my shooting on the 25m range.
This particular day I had done all I thought I needed to do, so headed back to the 50m range to see how much longer one of my colleagues, Julian, wanted to shoot, to get some idea of what time we could leave. When I arrived on the range Julian was doing his usual training routine, that is, firing 500 shots the day before the match and doing so whilst wearing his walkman turned up so loud that everyone within 20 metres can hear it clearly. I decided not to try to attract his attention (impossible to compete with his walkman) and decided instead to just sit and watch him for a while.
Shooting in the bay on Julian's right hand side was a young shooter from Korea. He had a Hammerli 152 and didn't appear to be having much joy with his training. He had one shot that was causing him quite a bit of bother, so much so that after five or six attempts he put his pistol down on the bench, still loaded, and walked away to get some advice from his team mates who were shooting a few bays away.
One of his wise team mates must have suggested that if he lightened his trigger weight he would have more luck in getting his shots away. So with this in mind (and not much else it seems) he picked up a screwdriver and his pistol (still loaded), held the pistol vertically with the muzzle very close to his unprotected ear, and inserted the screwdriver into the appropriate screw.
Well I'm sure that you can guess what happened next. The pistol went off, the shot went straight up and hit a steel joist in the roof, fragments of lead and dust from the roof lining rained down on people in a two or three metre radius, Julian and I included. The Korean stood there with a stunned and deaf look on his face; he packed his gear up and made a quiet exit, obviously not feeling like continuing with his training.
Meanwhile, Julian continued with his walkman-assisted training, totally oblivious to what had happened in the bay next to him. Only when he had finished and was packing his gear away did he ask me why dust had fallen on him during his training. His walkman was so loud he didn't even notice.