I'll preface this by saying I am a card-carrying range officer, match director, club president, and open master. This isn't new territory. (Posting on this forum is, I mean in the actual-real-life-real-world place). Evidently it's a breach of etiquette to post something like this before making an assload of posts first. Apologies.
I recently shot a level 2 match and the first stage we shot had a somewhat elderly CRO running the shooters, and proceeded to give each of us a little lecture. Here's what happened:
I finish shooting, remove the magazine, rack the slide and WATCH THE ROUND EXIT THE CHAMBER and catch it (as I've done for a couple years, I'm not going to debate the merits of this here). I then hold the slide open for the RO to verify. He looks at it, says "if clear hammer down" and then says "You need to look too". So I stare at him blankly for a moment, tilt the gun slightly, stare at my chamber, tilt it back for him to look again. He then finishes the command and gives me the following advice:
"See, if you had a broken extractor and there was still a round in the gun it would go off when you drop the hammer and you'd be going home". Being the wanna-be professional I am, I stare at him for a moment again and say "thank you".
As an RO you don't need to tell me about all the possibilities that MIGHT occur in a given situation. I'm sure there is a situation that could occur where this lecture may have been appropriate, but the fact that this guy said this to EVERYONE on our squad indicates to me that he's one of these RO's that has some perceived pet-peeve or other safety concern that he's the only person in the sport smart enough to realize, and decides he's going to "correct" every shooter he runs. Don't be that RO. Make your comments or safety concerns at the appropriate times (like after completing the range commands) if and when they arise. Don't decide ahead of time what your "lecture of the day" is going to be regardless of whether or not it actually applies in the situation.
All that said, I do have sincere appreciation for everyone that works a major match. It's a lot of work, and without it this sport wouldn't work. You don't need to make it harder by adding un-needed lectures for all the shooters.
*I went back and watched the Gopro footage and he didn't interrupt the command sequence as bad as I recalled, so I updated this to reflect more closely what happened.
