Dangerous Dan: The Man Who Would Not Quit

Everybody liked Dan.

But things happened to him.

I met Dan during my first year of shooting IPSC matches ... back when they had only three Divisions; Stock, Open, and Revolver.   And nobody was really sure what constituted an "OPEN" gun, because we rarely saw any that year.


Dan was an 'older' gentleman (probably 55 or so .. which age range I would now consider 'not older'), and he was an experienced competitor.  And he knew more about the rules of competition than I did.

Not that he had ever been trained as a Range Officer, but he had been around long enough to call me on it when I put "NEW SHOOTER" on my scorecards on my third match.  I admire a man who was willing to call me on my bullshit, although I was disappointed that I could no longer count on forgiveness from the range officer.

So I always tried to squad with Dan, because I knew that I could learn things from him.

REVOLVERS:
The first thing I learned from Dan was that Revolvers were not (in and of themselves) the perfectly functional piece of machinery which we had been trained to believe them to be.

Ever see what happens when you load a revolver with a round that has a high primer?

I remember with a certain amount of schadenfreude watching Dan trying to recover from a revolver which cylinder would not revolve because he had a high primer.  It was a simple stage of about a dozen rounds, but it required a reload.  Dan had not carefully inspected his ammunition (he loaded his own, obviously) before the match, so when the cylinder locked up after he reloaded the gun during the stage, ... well, did you ever see the Television advertisement for Samsonite luggage?  The one where the gorilla bounced all over the cage trying to open the suitcase?

That's what Dan looked like.

He couldn't unload the revolver .. it was in the middle of the cycle, so even though it was a double-action revolver .. he couldn't get the cylinder to swing out.  He couldn't advance the cylinder to the next register position, and he couldn't fire the revolver.

He ended up pounding the gun against some kind of standing prop (I think it was a vision barrier mounted on vertical two-by-fours), and then beating it with a rock which he picked up from the ground, and finally dragging out his pocket knife to use as a tool.

I think it took him about five minutes to resolve the problem.

And then, instead of taking a zero on the stage, Dan had the nerve to reload with more ammunition from the same batch and finish the stage.  I think his points score was in the low forties, and his time in the high 300's (seconds) in a 60 point stage.

Although I didn't understand the reason for his perseverance at the time, I now think it was that Dan would NOT be beaten.  He might not win .. but he would not LOSE!


Glock KaBOOM!

The second time I saw Dan really get into trouble was later that same year.   He wasn't shooting Revolver any more, but he had borrowed a Glock in .40 S&W from another shooter and using borrowed (from the pistol owner) ammunition.

You have probably already guessed where I'm going here.



This was in the VERY early years, when the Glock .40S&W frame was based on the 9mm Glock design without a fully supported chamber, and IPSC competitors were loading .40S&W ammunition beyond recommended tolerances and using VERY fast-burning gunpowder so they could make Major Power.

Yes, Dan experienced a KaBOOM! at the same range, and three very important things happened.

First, there was a bright flare through the pistol grip (and the magazine) when the base of a cartridge burst and allowed all of that burning gunpowder to exit via the grip rather than through the bore; the base of the magazine was driven out, and all of the un-fired rounds scattered on the ground at Dan's feet.

Second,  Dan very carefully attempted to unload the gun, and when he was unable to do so he simply handed the pistol to the Range Officer and made it "somebody else's problem";

Third, Dan dropped to his knees and immersed his flash-burned hands in a nearby mud puddle.  (Fortunately, this happened during one of the 9 months of the year where mud puddles are a common occurrence in Oregon/)

The surprising thing was that, although the pistol was flash-burned, Dan's hands were flash-burned, and the magazine was destroyed  (he had a hard time removing the magazine a few minutes later, because it had expanded like a cocoa-puff cereal), Dan DID go on the finish the match with a very low score but with huge Style Points.
(This was the point at which I began buying digital cameras and filming people during IPSC matches.)

Here's the kicker:

Dan finished the match, using the same gun, the same lot of ammunition, despite having first degree burns on both hands.  (Obviously, that magazine was no longer usable.)

Dan was a contractor, and moved out of state to take another job.  I haven't seen him for thirty years, but I'll never forget the man who WOULD NOT QUIT.