Going it Alone—Finding a Shooting Range, Part VII

The rules of the road are as much about etiquette as they are about safety. Same goes for the rules you’ll encounter at your firearm range.

Most of today’s modern ranges, especially those indoor facilities, take great pride in having their first-time students walk away feeling they’ve accomplished something important and looking forward to the next step. If that describes you, then that next step should be about getting comfortable on the range shooting by yourself.

The Rental Gun Counter is Your New Best Friend

The vast majority of today’s well-equipped indoor ranges have a variety of firearms available for rental on their range. If you have not yet purchased a firearm, this is the perfect way to get more comfortable with how various firearms work, what recoil across different calibers and firearm sizes feels like, and how the many different models fit and feel in your hands. While we’re focusing on handguns here, lots of ranges also have rifles and shotguns for rent; the outdoor clays range I used to shoot at regularly in Virginia had a bunch of rental shotguns for skeet, trap, and sporting clays, for instance, and today, many well-appointed indoor ranges also rent rifles and shotguns. Some ranges even rent full-auto firearms that, when you’re ready—and I can tell you this from experience—you will quickly discover are more fun than Christmas, New Year’s, the 4th of July, and your birthday all wrapped up in one big bash. But, I’m a little ahead of myself here, so back to the handguns.

First-time shooting classes generally keep things simple regarding the guns used during instruction. Revolvers and semi-automatics chambered in the very low-recoil .22 LR are predominantly used, especially in classes for students who have never handled a firearm before and are apprehensive about the experience. Others may combine the use of .22 LR handguns with, say, a revolver in .38 Special or a semi-automatic in 9mm, because most people quickly progress from the .22 to these larger but still easy-to-handle calibers.

For your first time on the range alone, it’s not at all a bad choice to rent a gun of the same caliber and action (revolver or semi-automatic) you used in your introductory class. Doesn’t have to be the exact same model, but if you were successful enough shooting that caliber your first time handling a gun and now feel comfortable using the range on your own, it keeps things simple. You’re at least a little familiar with that type of gun and the caliber’s recoil, and, so, you can now begin to practice and refine the basics of grip, sight alignment, trigger control, and the mechanical manipulations of the gun that you learned in that first class.

At the range check-in and rental counter, be open with the staff. Tell them you have recently taken a class for novices and that you’d like to shoot something similar to what you used in that session. Attentive, customer-service-oriented staff will make a recommendation, likely go over the basic rules of safety quickly with you, and then review how the gun you’re renting operates.

You will need to buy the range’s ammunition—it’s their gun, and they want to ensure that the ammo running through it is factory fresh and not the handloads a friend has given you. With the exception of ammunition designed specifically for defensive use, target ammunition comes in boxes of 50 rounds; .22 LR target or “plinking” ammo also commonly comes in 100-count containers.

Don’t Overdo It

Until you gain confidence and your skills and accuracy build, stick with one box of whatever you’re shooting for those first few times alone on the range. You’re using new muscles in a new way, and as you are progressing thoughtfully and deliberately though the mental checklist of safety behaviors, as well as how you’re gripping the gun and steadying your sights to keep them aligned, fatigue can set in quickly. When you’re new to shooting, you may find half a box of 9mm is just fine for a first session when you’re working on your marksmanship at a slow and careful pace.

Keep in mind, too, that you always want to end shooting on a good note. Let’s say you’ve shot two magazines of 10 rounds each and your groups are starting to get tighter. But you’re feeling a bit of a knot at the base of your neck, and when you start the third magazine, you can’t seem to get the sights to stay in line and your first two shots go astray. Take a break, set the gun on the bench—unloaded and pointed downrange—and go get a bottle of water outside the range enclosure. Now, go back and take two or three more shots. If they hit where you were aiming, unload, pack it up, and go home—you’ve had a good day on the range. If they don’t hit, unload, pack it up and go home. Continuing to shoot as your body fatigues and target hits continue to wander does nothing but reinforce bad habits, including things like an inconsistent grip, bad trigger pulls, incorrect sight alignment, and other ills.

Tip! If you’ve haven’t shot all the ammunition you purchased with a rental gun, save it in its original box, often with the store’s price sticker on it, and the receipt. In most cases, the range will let you use that ammo with the next gun you rent from them. Just ask them first. Like I said, they don’t want handloaded/reloaded ammunition in their guns, nor do they want ammo purchased from another retailer.

Of course, you can also stop halfway through a box of ammunition and swap out your first rental for a different make and model. This is a great way to start becoming familiar with the wealth of gun brands and models out there while shooting a caliber with which you’re becoming comfortable. It’s also a way to see how different a caliber can feel when the size and weight of the gun changes, something that will be important when you start exploring purchasing firearms for specific purposes.

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In our next column, range etiquette is the topic of the day. Stay tuned!