The Rental Gun Case—Your Best Friend on the Range

When I was a manager at a combo firearm retail store and indoor range in Northern Virginia, back in the early 1990s, our rental-gun counter was a store feature many of our customers were surprised to find. Wait, I can rent the gun I’m thinking about buying and see if I like it? was the amazed response from more than a few. Today, a case full of rental guns is as much a fixture of store-and-range facilities as the front doors, and for good reason.

Try Before You Buy

The obvious benefit of being able to rent a gun is the test drive. Both new shooters who have yet to buy their first gun and experienced firearm owners with a safe full of firearms at home are smart to take advantage of paying a small fee to rent a gun they’re interested in and buy a box of the range’s ammo before committing the hundreds of dollars most quality handguns cost today.

I did just that back at that range I worked for. I owned a few handguns then, mostly older revolvers I’d inherited from one of my grandfathers, and I was looking for a newer model that would be practical for personal protection. Leaning toward a .357 Magnum, I was able to try several Ruger and Smith & Wesson models on the range, ultimately deciding that a particular S&W fit my hand the best and had enough weight to better tame the recoil from the magnum rounds.

I think even back then, that revolver, a Model 686 Plus with a 3-inch barrel and a bright-orange target front sight ramp that stood out well against black-centered bull’s-eye targets, cost close to $600 with my employee discount, and you’ll have to believe me when I say that was a lot of money for me at the time. (Today, the base Model 686 starts around $900 and goes up from there, depending on features and barrel length.) Was buying a box each of .38 Special and .357 Magnum (if you’re new to guns, many revolvers and some rifles can chamber similar cartridges, something else we’ll discuss in another column), worth it? Absolutely. It allowed me to discover that I really preferred the heavier L-frame of the Model 686 over the lighter K-frames that S&W offered, and that the gun felt better balanced to me than a comparable Ruger revolver. I also liked the way the wood grips with finger grooves and a rounded butt helped me maintain a consistent grip, which not only helped with accuracy, but also sight recovery and overall control with the magnum rounds. It was a cinch to shoot with the much less expensive and lower-recoil .38 Special rounds, which would be great for practice.

My $600 outlay for the gun really cost me about $625 with the ammo I had to purchase for the rental guns. In the end, and herein lies the primary beauty of your range’s rental gun case, that was a far better deal than taking home a gun I didn’t enjoy shooting and therefore wouldn’t practice with it. It would also ultimately prevent me from selling that gun at a loss, because new guns, like cars, for the most part depreciate the minute you take them out of the store.

Changing Calibers, Changing Guns

Your range’s rental gun inventory offers more than just the ability to make a more intelligent decision about a model that suits you. Especially for new shooters who don’t yet have a ton of experience behind the trigger but are getting to the range regularly and starting to explore all that’s out there when it comes to guns for defensive use, target shooting, and competitive shooting sports, rental guns allow you to experience different calibers and how all those calibers feel in guns of vastly different design.

The most popular pistol caliber in America is the 9mm Luger, also known as 9mm Parabellum. Disregarding the recent pandemic shortages, it’s readily available, reasonably priced, easy to practice and maintain skills with, and very manageable recoil-wise, once you’ve graduated off the pip-squeak .22 LR many new shooters start with. But a 9mm round fired from sub-compact or micro semi-automatic models (also known as “mouse guns”), which are useful and appropriate for concealed carry, feels much different than that same round fired through a full-size target pistol or a full-size home-defense gun like the Biofire Smart Gun®. It will also feel different in guns of similar sizes but different weights, just as it will feel different when fired through a striker-fired design (Glock, S&W M&P-series, and Ruger EC9 pistols) versus traditional hammer-enabled semiautomatics (Sig P229, Beretta 92 series, Springfield Armory 1911 Prodigy). Therefore, when you begin exploring concealed-carry pistols or a gun with which to shoot IDPA matches, the rental gun case gives you the opportunity to see how a round you prefer performs across various firearm designs. (Note: You are not going to believe how pleasant the 9mm is in the Biofire Smart Gun—it may just take the title for minimal recoil!)

Beyond trying different guns, rental guns also let you explore different calibers. Back in the ’90s, when I managed that retail store and range, the 10mm round had been touted as the round law enforcement needed; the FBI had adopted it as its service-pistol round after agents were outgunned and two killed while trying to apprehend a couple of violent criminals in a 1986 shootout in the Miami metro area. The adoption of the 10mm didn’t go over well, though, with many agents find the recoil unmanageable and the full-size guns needed to fire the big cartridge unwieldy.

S&W got to work fixing the problem, shortening the 10mm to what became known as the .40 S&W, a round that lives on as a great commercial success. Though not as popular today as it once was—cartridge trends come and go—the .40 S&W is still an excellent choice for many target sports and defensive uses. But how are you going to know you like the caliber if you don’t fire a box or two of 50 rounds through a couple different rental gun.

Finally, the rental gun case is a great way to explore action types. For instance, I once toyed with getting involved in cowboy action shooting (administered by the Single Action Shooting Society, or SASS). Competitors get to dress up in costumes of the O.K. Corral-era and adopt Wild West aliases like “Red River Rudy” and “Cussin’ Kate,” and they all shoot, as you might imagine, single-action revolvers and a select number of lever-action rifles reminiscent of the years when the deer and the antelope played across the Great Plains. So, I turned to my rental gun case and some of the beautiful single-action Ruger revolvers there—and it turns out I just didn’t like shooting a single-action revolver. Along the way, and many rental guns later, I fell in love with Colt 1911 single-action semiautomatics in .45 ACP, and that led me to many years having a ball shooting USPSA/IPSC matches.

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There are thousands of gun models out there. Some you’ll love, some you’ll never want to touch again. Some you’ll buy for regular use, some for very specific and limited applications. While your range’s rental gun case won’t have one of everything, and even if it doesn’t have exactly the model you’re wanting to try, there’s no better way to get a feel for what the firearm industry has to offer and how these marvelous tools can benefit your life.