Indoor Range Shooting / Policies / Rules

[Mass Shooter]

What club policies / regulations are in place at your indoor "pistol" range to help curb stray hits into the side walls, floor, ceiling, hvac, ect. I’m looking for ideas to deal with a growing problem at our range facility and thought to post a topic here to inspire some thoughts.

We have an indoor range facility, 50’ x 7 station w/ an overhead pulley system to reel targets down range and retrieve. Our side walls, ceiling, floor, anything that protrudes seems to be a target for certain unknown members / guests at random times of operation.

Our range has a card-key system and available 24/7 to club members

I’m sure this is a concerning problem at most indoor ranges and I’d like to take a few of your thoughts to our B.O.D. committee to generate a discussion / action item.

Your thougts please

[Dr. Jim]

If you are using a card key system, does the computer track access? Our club is mainly evenings and supervised, but is rented to security firms for training courses, and also has internet cameras in clubroom, firing line and looking down range. While the security firms really do mess up the target frames, lights and bounce lead off the floor and baffles, the club members are not nearly so bad. We charge the security firms enough to cover damage costs as part of the rent.

Dr Jim

[Levergun59]

Your problem is not unique. Have you ever seen a PPC match at a police range. The lights are broken, walls hit, ceiling and floor not exempt either. When you are only shooting bullseye, the range damage will be minimal. Open it up to combat courses or IPSIG and all heck breaks loose. Hope this helps
Chris

[The Bear]

The Range I shoot at, has several rules to keep bullets from impacting in places they should not be. But we have added extra wood in some areas that can be easily changed out when needed.

Tape the target to a piece of cardboard and hang the cardboard from the target carrier. This give enough space just incase a shot goes high. I must point out that this rule is omitted during a match to allow for target hight regulations.

No cross lane shooting.

Lastly, a minimum distance from shooter to target to cut down the angle and keep the bullets in the traps. Our minimum distance is 15'.

Hope this helps.

[Stumpy1]

Our range has the same sort of problems. We actually installed a video camera system to be able to identify the folks that cause this type of damage. In addition, we have instituted a 'guest training program' that all members are required to complete before they are allowed to bring in guests. All of that has helped to a good degree. Unfortunately, we still have occurrences of range damage. More unfortunately, getting the BoD to act on this damage is sometimes difficult and oftentimes variable. Our range damage is most often associated with guests of members, and generally comes at the same time as safety violations -sometimes severe safety violations.

I think that you just have to slowly chip away at this type of behavior. If you can get a firm committment from your BoD to institute disciplinary action then you are miles ahead of where we were. If not, you just have to nibble away at it little by little.

One thing that we have found is that the perpetrators of the damage, when confronted completely deny it -until we 'roll tape'. The other thing we have found is that once we do decide on disciplinary action, we more often than not see that member quit the club.

I hope you are able to make some progress on this issue.

Stumpy1

[Misny]

Our indoor range is only available for official functions and supervised training/ practice shooting. It was designed for bullseye pistol, International pistol and smallbore rifle shooting. We still have a few stray shots that have been shot into the baffles, but a lot less damage than if members were given unrestricted use. It isn't fair that a few would destroy a range that so many gave so much effort to build and maintain. My suggestion is to close the range to unrestricted/ unsupervised use.

[philip_T]

Install video cams asap. Put cameras in a cage also. Remote the recorder.
Hope the jokers that fool around and cross shoot each others targets
get recorded before they really hurt someone.
Sounds like a lawsuit in the making..

[william]

Oh, isn't this a familiar story! A small contingent at my club managed to get enough votes on the board of directors to allow IDPA practice / competition on the indoor range. It wasn't good enough for them to be able to play Cops & Robbers outdoors for 7 months a year. No, they had to have it all - with predictable results. A costly backstop rebuild and a newly installed key card system SEEM to have largely fixed the problem, both made necessary because children wanted to play with adult toys.

[topclass52]

Our indoor range is for smallbore and air gun use only, and only for organized competitive events -- no open use by members. All events have at least one RSO in attendance or as a participant. It keeps errant shots to only a few rounds into the eyebrow above the targets.

[Mass Shooter]

Thanks for sharing notes on your indoor range policies. We are taking a hard look at installing electronic survailence devices that will indicate a hit into non-target area which will send a signai indicating time of day and display the card-key holders for that time period of shooting.
Will have to see how the costs add up but I'm thinking this will be a nice benifit to our club. ... There are lots of good ideas mentioned here as well.

I guess there's always a few who think they're Wyatt Earp!

I'm hoping to post a follow-up once we get a plan in motion.

[kiwiVT]

I work at an indoor shooting range and the three most important things I've learned are:

1) it's better to shoot outdoors

2) the average member of the general public is an idiot and can't follow the simplest of rules

3) when it comes to ability to shoot accurately and handle guns safely, the phrase "NRA certified instructor" means nothing and being a police officer means little more

rant off / thanks for letting me vent

(this may seem harsh for my "first" post but it isn't, I had to re-register b/c I forgot both my old username and password)

I wish I had concrete answers to your questions but I don't think there are any... it comes down to education and individuals taking personal responsibility... good luck

[Steve Yuszka]

I own a retail shop and indoor pistol range. This problem is consistent and has no clear solution unless you see the issue and deal with it immediately. I instituted a few additional rules; no rapid fire, double taps are O.K, controlled aimed fire at the targets only. No full auto firearms. No drawing from a holster. No ammo attracted to a magnet, i.e steel is not allowed. There are plenty of steel cased ammo and others are copper washed steel jacketed, use a magnet. I put 20K in my range four years ago and you couldn't tell it today. But, it is open to the public and not just a members only club.

[BenEnglishTX]

Lastly, a minimum distance from shooter to target to cut down the angle and keep the bullets in the traps. Our minimum distance is 15'.

I'm a member of a commercial range that caters to the concealed carry crowd. I looked really funny and out of place on the firing line yesterday, holding a Tompkins free pistol (Christmas present from my sis) in one hand and shooting at targets 25 yards away. I'm used to the stares. :-)

However, the range makes a great deal of income from concealed carry classes. Since my state requires a firing test that starts at 3 yards, the range simply can't put a reasonable minimum distance requirement in their rules. Ultimately, there's lots of unintentional cross-lane firing but nobody really cares since nearly all targets are between 3 and 10 yards. Only crazy people like me with targets at the far end of the range are bothered and there aren't enough of us to justify getting in the face of all the regular customers.

To someone who wants to see all range behavior tightly controlled, this places looks just unsafe enough to make you queasy. However, they've managed to find a compromise between driving away customers and tight control without sacrificing safety to any unacceptable degree. (As an aside to folks who say "safety must never be compromised" - that's ridiculous. You compromise your safety every time you get in a car. All intelligent security procedures are designed to reduce risk to an acceptable degree, not eliminate it. Elimination is impossible, always, and any attempt to do so is always ridiculously expensive.)

Here's how they run things -

There are two ranges - a pistol range and an "anything" range. The rules are ostensibly the same but the ability to partition off some shooters to the rifle side, where the lanes are wider, the lane dividers much more dense, etc., gives them some latitude to be more or less tight, depending on the situation.

No rapid fire. The rule is right up there on the board. During the evenings when every lane is filled and there's an hour wait to get a slot, they enforce the rule. On a dead weekday morning when they know everyone on the firing line by name, the rule is ignored. This is more true, more often, on the rifle side where the full-auto firing is allowed. It's kinda tough to tell anyone they can't do rapid fire when the guy next to them just let loose with a 50-round burst from a rifle rented to them by the range.

They sweep the floor constantly. When they run across steel-cased ammo, the tell the user to cut it out because it's against the rules. The steel cases get dumped in the trash. They don't let the cases build up on the floor so long that a few steel cases become a sorting problem for them when dealing with their brass recycler.

They're nice. Most range owners have seen so much crap that they've gotten crusty. These guys make a huge effort to be nice. If someone doesn't know what they're doing, those customers don't hesitate to ask for help. This creates an atmosphere of trust with the customers and also a realization that an employee might be right behind you, watching you, at any time, since they're always coming onto the range to help folks.

They use steel overhead baffles but also hang wood from them. Thus, if a shot goes way high, a shower of wood will fall in that lane. Most often, an employee will stop by with a kind and friendly "Hi, how's it going, anything I can do to help?" that will often be followed by a 10 or 15-minute personalized training session on firearms basics. All very friendly, all designed to turn a dangerously inaccurate shooter into someone who can at least stay on paper at 5 yards.

The construction of the range is a concrete box. Shots into the floor or side walls produce no real damage. The backstop catches everything. The overhead tracks are the only downrange components that are in any danger and this commercial range simply accepts that daily repairs are part of the cost of doing business. They went with a great compromise on type of target return mechanism. They didn't go with bare cables that flop around (God, I hate that!) and can be cut with a single errant round. Nor did they go with something ridiculously overbuilt that would be expensive to repair if it was hit with AP ammo. Instead, they have a simple V-channel overhead with an "out and back" toggle switch. The worst possible damage would be if a shotgun slug were to hit right at a junction of the V-track; that could knock down a section of the overhead. This actually happened once, meaning that lane closed for the rest of the day. It was fixed before the start of business the next day.

Generally, then, the policies of this range are to be available and watchful to take care of idiots, build facilities that can withstand the level of abuse expected from the targeted demographic, and be flexible. As a result, to a dedicated, high-level NRA or ISSF competitor, the place might look like a mildly dangerous dump. But for the general public and the people that run this range, things work well.

I realize that the OP was asking about a private club range that probably isn't staffed full-time, but I still think there are some good principles in play at my local commercial range.