UK AR15 Forum - Is there one?

[bobbob]

If your club members were told they could not access across the range when they came back it may have been that the NRA event had already started and they would be crossing 300 yards in front of the firing taking place at 400 yards. Whilst there should be no excuse for rude aggressive behaviour I my self have had on occasion to robustly remind range users not to ignore the signs placed by the Range Staff, for their safety, as they bimble about in complete oblivion to what is going on around them, fact is the "Danger Live Firing Ahead" signs do get moved during the day on both Century and Stickledown so don't be surprised if you can't take a short cut for convenience.

It was still lunch time when the members came back as we called them to see if they could find out what was going on at the range office as the response we had was basically, tough, if you don't like it, move. If we hadn't started to move our belongings when we did we would have been stuck in the middle of the range as we couldn't have driven back to the road either way. As I said, if our club had been warned that the area to our right was going to become "live" after lunch, we would have booked elsewhere as we always have a full day on one range.

As for the comment "fact is the "Danger Live Firing Ahead" signs do get moved during the day on both Century and Stickledown so don't be surprised if you can't take a short cut for convenience". This isn't a matter of taking a short cut for convenience. It's more to do with having a disability that limits the number of times someone can walk back to their vehicle and the attitude when communication goes wrong.

[DaddyPig]

I do find all this rather amusing...

clapclap clapclap clapclap clapclap

...but take on board what is being said....

[Blackstuff]

Whoops, didn't really mean to open a can of worms, i was just looking for somewhere to flog an AR-15 lower receiver!

Thanks for the info folks!

[John MH]

Understand all that bobbob but your problem is fundamentally with the Range Office, that is provided that the Club Official made it quite clear at the time of the booking of your members disabilities. If your members were parading across Butt 19 ignoring the "Danger Live Firing Ahead" signs towards the back end of the lunch hour then I don't find it surprising that they were reminded not to come back that way as firing would be commencing at 13:30. I want there and can't comment on what was said but if you have to move because the safety arcs have changed tuff, make it clear to the Range Office when you book that you have special needs and they will I'm sure try to accommodate, but also be aware they (the NRA) are trying to run a profitable business so encourage people to enter their events and use the ranges so 50 people pay £27.00 each equates to £1350, did your club pay that on the day in question?

And whats the problem with surplus 'Camo', does that label someone?

[Agentfunky]

Putting aside the debate about the ARFCOM UKHTF history for a moment, I would suggest that any initial enquires could be made on forums like this or the ARFCOM UKHTF.

Despite the general move towards the CSR Shooter forum many of us CSR and PR shooters are still members of ARFCOM and if you have genuine questions people will be happy to help.

The best bit of advice would be to decide what type of shooting you want to do, and what calibres you are interested in. Once you have an idea of what you are looking for in terms of your shooting experience then people can point you in the right direction.

If competitive shooting is your preference, then I would strongly recommend going down to a shoot and asking the guys there. I have never seen a situation where prospective CSR and PR shooters were not welcome to come along and see what we do, and there is a lot of support for new shooters so you will be in good hands.

For technical information there are a lot of sources on the web - ARFCOM has some superb techy forums and there are gunplumbers throughout the UK who will be happy to assist were they can

I can address some of the issues that ARFCOM UKHTF faced if people wish, as I was one of the moderators on there, but Blacknight has pretty much covered it as it happened.

Firstly, ARFCOM provided us with many years of support to get the CSR and PR scene in the UK off the ground. We recognise the role ARFCOM played in the UK scene and many of us remain as fully paid up members of ARFCOM, which is a tremendous resource for all things AR related and more besides.

However, as moderators we only had limited powers on the forum, and any controls were mainly held by site staff. For better or worse, it was decided by the members that it was sustainable for us to set up our own forum which we could dedicate to our interests and try to cut down on some of the more disruptive aspects and external influences. This is one of the reasons for many forums being set up.

The motivation for the new forum didn't come out of a collective spitting of dummies as some have alluded to, but out of a persistent and worsening situation, where discussions were being disrupted, and a recognition that if we wanted to have some autonomy for competitive UK AR15 shooting we needed to go it alone. In this respect and to all intents and purposes we simply outgrew what ARFCOM could offer us within their rules. Several members dedicated a lot of time and energy into building a great forum (for which they deserve a lot of praise) and the result was CSR shooter.

That doesn't not mean that CSR and the ARFCOM crowd have become insular and isolationist in any way (far from it), it's just that we wanted a better handle on the way the forum was going, which ARFCOM could not deliver, so we have supported the setting up our own forum which has been a great success.

Most forums have a vetting process including this one, which is perfectly understandable. It seems somewhat unfair that some members here would criticise CSR shooter for having the same checks and balances in place as most UK shooting forums.

For the record, very few people were banned from the UKHTF on ARFCOM. I know that many people, including myself, did try to steer newer members to the forum in the right direction and explain the dynamics, but some (and only some) did not take heed of the advice and ended up doing themselves no favours.

I appreciate that some will perceive things differently depending on personal experience, but I hope that explains some of the background a little and how to get to the information and advice the advice that is available for the AR shooting activities in the UK.

[John MH]

That's a bit of a long post for your first one Phil, I hope you are not going to make a habit of it on here.

[Mikaveli]

The best bit of advice would be to decide what type of shooting you want to do, and what calibres you are interested in. Once you have an idea of what you are looking for in terms of your shooting experience then people can point you in the right direction.

If competitive shooting is your preference, then I would strongly recommend going down to a shoot and asking the guys there. I have never seen a situation where prospective CSR and PR shooters were not welcome to come along and see what we do, and there is a lot of support for new shooters so you will be in good hands.

I'll be doing that in the future - but I'd prefer if there was more open information on t'internet.

[Sim G]

Understand all that bobbob but your problem is fundamentally with the Range Office, that is provided that the Club Official made it quite clear at the time of the booking of your members disabilities. If your members were parading across Butt 19 ignoring the "Danger Live Firing Ahead" signs towards the back end of the lunch hour then I don't find it surprising that they were reminded not to come back that way as firing would be commencing at 13:30. I want there and can't comment on what was said but if you have to move because the safety arcs have changed tuff, make it clear to the Range Office when you book that you have special needs and they will I'm sure try to accommodate, but also be aware they (the NRA) are trying to run a profitable business so encourage people to enter their events and use the ranges so 50 people pay £27.00 each equates to £1350, did your club pay that on the day in question?

And whats the problem with surplus 'Camo', does that label someone?

I think Sue's "problem" was more to do with how people with a visable disability were treated by the CSR community, rather than not getting the requiste information from the range office.

Evidentally, 1300 quid makes a group more important than another? Real men, yeah, OK.

As for camo, been banned from Lydd and Hythe by the military, unless you are currently serving regular or reservist. Seems the military are fed up with the "Walts" parading about.....

[John MH]

You really are very opinionated aren't you.

The £1300 was the NRA's, it doesn't make anyone more important but the range was booked by the NRA for an NRA event, end of.

Were you there, were the wheel chairs shoved off the range, were the sticks and canes kicked out from under? I think not.

Someone said something that someone else did not like, does that mean everyone else is to be tarred with the same brush.

Have you ever met anyone physically disabled with an objectionable nature?

[bobbob]

Understand all that bobbob but your problem is fundamentally with the Range Office, that is provided that the Club Official made it quite clear at the time of the booking of your members disabilities. If your members were parading across Butt 19 ignoring the "Danger Live Firing Ahead" signs towards the back end of the lunch hour then I don't find it surprising that they were reminded not to come back that way as firing would be commencing at 13:30. I want there and can't comment on what was said but if you have to move because the safety arcs have changed tuff, make it clear to the Range Office when you book that you have special needs and they will I'm sure try to accommodate, but also be aware they (the NRA) are trying to run a profitable business so encourage people to enter their events and use the ranges so 50 people pay £27.00 each equates to £1350, did your club pay that on the day in question?

And whats the problem with surplus 'Camo', does that label someone?

When our members went to lunch they were expecting to return to the same firing points they had left at 12:30 as we have done before. They were not "parading across Butt 19". By the time they returned, early, from lunch due to the mess up on the range, I had managed to get all of their belongings to the gate. They were trying to get across the car park to the gate to collect their belongings. That is the area where they were stopped. Not once when it became obvious that we had been left stranded did anyone from the organisers of the other club approach us to explain that the range access was changing, they just tried to stop anybody from collecting their belongings while the range was still closed to live fire.

As for money, we thought that at the time. Our club books and pays in advance. I find it very sad that booking ranges is treated like a game of trumps.

I and my club take safety very seriously. If we had stayed where we were and needed to leave we wouldn't have just wandered across the live area. A stop call would have had to be made which would have caused a very big inconvenience.

I have no gripe with the NRA, they are trying to improve things. The loos are coming along a treat by the way.

For the sake of the forum I shall creep back into my shell, I don't usually get involved in the heated threads.

Safe shooting smile2