Air rifle, BB gun eye safety

Or how I almost shot my eye out!

One year ago yesterday, I was sighting in an air rifle at ten yards using a steel pellet trap when I experienced a severe sharp pain in my left eye followed by a fierce burning.  I had forgotten to don my shooting glasses which were right there in front of me on the bench.  I informed my wife who told me we were going to the ER right now. She told me she could see a fleck of metal in a rapidly expanding bloody hemorrhage in my left eye. So I jumped into the passenger side of the truck and off we went. 

At the Hospital we experienced the usual long wait and the eventual necessity to repeat my story at least six times (and I was to tell this story at least one hundred more times since).  Between the irritation and the intermittent excruciating  pain I began to wonder if I was going to lose my eye.  I prayed that I wouldn't lose my sight.  Of course everyone on staff had to enter the exam room and take a look. Being afraid to mess with it they sent me to a local eye surgeon.

The surgeon was concerned that the pellet fragment had penetrated my eye ball and was plugging a hole that would have to be sewn closed in the operating room.  So he probed it with needle like tweezer.  Luck (more likely providence) would have it the fragment hadn’t done more damage than to break some blood vessels in the sclera.  He was able to remove the piece, write me a prescription for an antibiotic and send me home.  

I have had some time to think about what had happened and what I can do about it.  Mostly how important my eyesight is to me and my family.  I need both eyes to work in the career I have chosen, see my son, read a book, watch a movie or enjoy a sunset.  All this because I was in too much of a hurry to put on a pair of safety glasses that were less than two feet away. I count myself lucky.  My wife told me she would ban air guns at our house forever if she ever saw me shooting without eye protection again.  I didn’t lose an eye, it has healed.  My sight is fine but the picture of that big red dot in my left eye reminds me. Wear your safety glasses!

Rick Klages