Shooting Ranges Don’t Kill People, People Do

Way to spoil a nice evening at the shooting range:

The 20-year-old college-student son of a globetrotting UN staffer fatally shot himself in the head at a popular Chelsea rifle range that had sold him ammunition, rented him a high-powered rifle — and left him on his own, The Post has learned.

The bizarre suicide of Patrick Karorero happened June 3 inside the West Side Pistol Range on West 20th Street, which caters to Wall Street types, law-enforcement officials and shooting hobbyists.

It’s where Robert De Niro, playing cabby Travis Bickle in the 1976 movie “Taxi Driver,” was filmed staring down a barrel of a gun.

The range’s owner, Robert Derrig, did not return calls for comment, and the NYPD said only the tragedy was “under investigation.”

The mayor’s office, which has waged a highly publicized campaign against gun violence, also declined to comment.

Sources familiar with the case provided the following account:

Karorero, who had first visited the range on May 20, paid a $25 range fee and purchased three boxes, or 150 rounds, of 9mm ammunition for an additional $45.

He was then rented a Hi-Point 9mm carbine rifle for another $40 and left alone to practice.

The Hi-Point is the same type of rifle wielded by one of the gunmen in the Columbine HS massacre.

At about 9 p.m., some two hours after showing up, a jittery Karorero waited for several other target shooters near him to leave the area.

Then, after looking distractedly to either side, he fired a rifle shot into his head.

The bullet tore a hole in the ceiling of the range, which is in the basement of an office building.