Guide To: Building a Shooting Range

A shooting range is a place where law-abiding, licensed gun owners can practice shooting in a safe environment. Some patrons come to practice handgun shooting to develop self-defense skills. Other patrons come to practice rifle shooting for the purpose of honing their hunting skills. Some ranges place limits on the types of guns used, whereas other ranges accommodate a wider range of legal firearms. Indoor and outdoor ranges even exist for archery practice.

Indoor ranges typically consist of a sloped bank against a back wall and baffles on the roof. Outdoor ranges are more open-ended, but they often feature concrete, baffle-topped structures. Whether you’re building an indoor shooting range or an outdoor one, you’ll need to find or develop a foolproof bullet-trapping system that meets safety and sanitation standards.

First, however, you’ll need to lay the groundwork for the shooting range by determining its size, type, setting, and purpose. As soon as everything is ready, it’ll be time to make a pitch to your local city council, which will examine your proposed shooting range to ensure it meets legal requirements and regulations as they apply in your area.

How to prepare a shooting range?

some concerns about a building a shooting range

When you set your sights on building a shooting range, there’s a lot of ground to cover. As you determine how many acres for an outdoor shooting range will be necessary – or, alternatively, how large a building would have to be to house an indoor range – you’ll also need to determine the scope of your shooting range and various environmental factors.

Depending on whether your range is outdoor or indoor, the requirements of your range could vary, but some concerns apply across the board, such as the following:

How many patrons do you intend to serve?

Which types of firearms will be permitted?

Will the ventilation be sufficient?

Will noise be adequately blocked?

What are the safety protocols for patrons and employees?

Once you’ve made concrete choices in the following six areas, your idea for a shooting range will be a whole lot closer to becoming a reality.

#1. Choose Between Building an Indoor Shooting Range or an Outdoor Shooting Range

If you’re currently trying to decide whether you’d rather operate an indoor range or an outdoor range, consider the needs of the patrons you intend to serve. Most specifically, which type of range would they prefer?

If you intend to have patronage that primarily consists of private gun owners who wish to practice shooting handguns for the purpose of self-defense, an indoor range would be perfectly suitable and probably easier to manage than an outdoor range.

If, on the other hand, you intend to run a shooting range for hunters to practice rifle shooting, an outdoor range would offer longer-range shooting distances and would, therefore, be more suitable since your patrons will be coming to the range to practice an outdoor sport. With an outdoor range, hunters can gain practice on two of the most critical skills of the sport – an ability to shoot at long range and an ability to cope with different types of weather and natural elements while shooting.

The choice between an urban versus rural location for your shooting range should also be considered in this regard. If you plan to build a shooting range in or near an urban environment, an indoor range would be the most appropriate – and likely the only feasible – option. By contrast, if your sights are set somewhere along a vast rural stretch of land, an outdoor shooting range would be just as practical, if not preferable.

#2. Decide How Many Shooters You Plan to Accommodate

As you determine the size of your prospective shooting range, you can more easily decide upon the square footage by coming up with an estimate of the number of shooters you will need to accommodate. Of course, the size of a shooting range can simply predicate the number of people who could come in to practice at any given time, but it’s best to operate a shooting range that’s most accommodating to the largest number of local, licensed shooters in a particular category.

what type of shooting range do you intend to operate?

Therefore, several questions should be considered here. What type of shooting range – self-defense, hunting, archery – do you intend to operate? From the chosen category, how many licensed gun-owners live closer to the location of your prospective shooting range than any competing ranges in your city, county, or state? With that information, you can more easily determine the general number – as well as some of the more specific needs – of the shooters who will frequent your range.

#3. Determine Which Types of Guns and Ammunition Will Be Permitted at Your Shooting Range

The type of shooting range you choose to build is one thing, but the types of guns you allow to be used on the premises is a more complex matter. For starters, certain types of guns come with different licensing laws in various states and counties. Second of all, different types of guns place different demands on a bullet trap.

Tests have shown that on some of the most effective bullet-stopping media like sand, pistols can penetrate deeper than rifles. As such, a pistol shooting range would need a deeper set of sand compartments than a rifle shooting range. Rifle bullets, which travel at a higher velocity, also tend to break up more within a sand compartment, which in turn, can place more of a demand on the maintenance aspects of a shooting range.

#4. Choose an Optimal Air Ventilation System for the Shooting Range

Air quality can be comprised in any environment, indoor or outdoor, where particulates of lead go airborne. In a shooting range, this is one of the main areas of environmental concern due to the presence of lead in spent rounds of bullets. The dust from these can easily become aerosolized and end up being inhaled by – as well as landing on the hair, skin, and clothing of – patrons and employees. To prevent lead elements from infecting the air at a range, it’s crucial to have proper ventilation at an indoor shooting facility.

Granted, the air at an outdoor range will naturally circulate more freely and be far less prone to congestion. As such, less air maintenance is generally required at an outdoor range. However, even an outdoor range can have problems with aerosolized lead dust, particularly within concrete structures under ballistic baffles in which the air can easily stagnate. Therefore, the health of shooters as well as range employees depends on the maintenance of ventilation systems at indoor and – to a smaller though no less significant degree – outdoor shooting ranges.

#5. Select an Optimal Soundproofing System to Curb Bullet Noise Pressure

in an indoor shooting range noise should not exceed 140 db

Firearms are capable of producing high levels of sound pressure, the likes of which can damage hearing for those who come to a shooting range unprotected. While it’s important for shooters to wear earplugs and/or earmuffs when firing rounds, it’s even more crucial for a shooting range to have sufficient sound barriers in place.

In an indoor range, noise should not exceed 140 dB. To suppress the travel of noise pressure from one corridor to another, today’s indoor ranges use air – locked soundproofing. Each corridor consists of mirror-image egress doors at opposite ends. In some jurisdictions, the regulations for shooting ranges prohibit the use of .50 caliber bullets or higher.

At outdoor ranges, it’s easier to avoid excess noise exposure by placing shooting columns further apart from one another. However, high levels of noise pressure can still be generated within concrete baffle-topped structures. In any case, earplugs and earmuffs should always be worn when shooting at indoor or outdoor ranges.

#6. Determine Whether the Shooting Range Will Be Supervised or Unsupervised

In terms of the management of a shooting range, one of the more defining aspects is the presence of range officers or the lack thereof. Therefore, the reputation of your shooting range will somewhat be affected by whether you choose to operate a supervised or unsupervised range. Of course, you’ll need to check local laws for the area in question to see what regulations for shooting ranges might apply.

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