I must confess to an extremely embarrassing (not to mention potentially disastrous) screw up. I'm not thrilled about telling this, but perhaps it will prevent someone else from making the same mistake.
I went shooting at a local indoor range last December. I had taken all 4 of my 9mm pistols. When I finished, I replaced each gun in a nylon sleeve, and put then in my range bag. However, the bag was purchased when I only had 2 guns, and was too small. When I got home, and took the guns out of the bag for cleaning, I could not find my Kel-tec P11. Since I had shot it, I knew that it should be there. I searched the car, house, everywhere, and couldn't find it. The range was closed, so I couldn't call right then.
The next day at work had me so busy that I couldn't get to a phone. When I called the range the following day, I was told that they had found it. Apparently, the gun sleeve had fallen out of the bag (the bag was too full to close). Not only did the padded gun not make much of a sound, I was still wearing hearing protection, as I was in the range area, so I did not hear it when it fell. To complicate matters, when I went to pick up the gun, it wasn't there.
The manager had, per standard policy, checked the gun with Metro. Since it was new, while registered, the serial number did not yet appear as registered. So, the they turned the gun over to Metro. Fortunately, there was no hassle retrieving the gun, other than having to go to the evidence storage building during their (and my) office hours. Fortunately, this has a happy ending, with the only consequence being my loss of time (and sleep),. But the thought that the gun could have been found and used in the commission of a crime, or worse, injure or kill someone, was terrifying.
Since then, I have bought a much larger range bag, and I inventory the guns after leaving the range area. This time, I dodged a bullet (no pun intended), but I'm quite aware that the results could have been much different. There will not be another occurrence.
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Spaced that out a bit - para's are good :smilez: - Chris