Here at BASICS: Range & Gun, we try to make shooting and practicing with your firearms as convenient and hassle free as possible. We keep our day shooting fees and annual membership prices low so that people can afford to practice with their firearms. We manufacture ammunition in 5 different handgun calibers on site so shooters will always have low cost ammo available for training. Last year, we made a very difficult decision to require shooters to purchase all .223/5.56NATO ammo from us if they want to shoot it on our range.
This was a decision made purely in the interest of range and shooter safety. As many of you know, there is a lot of inexpensive rifle ammo available for purchase. Much of it is surplus military ammo. A lot of that ammo is designed to penetrate hard targets. Some of it is tracer ammo designed to let shooters track the flight and impact of their rounds. Since we are an indoor range and are very concerned with making sure the rounds fired on the range stay on the range, you can understand why we’re concerned with making sure this ammo doesn’t make it out to our firing line.
We noticed that most of our shooters were as concerned with following the rules and protecting our range as we were. However, there were some novice shooters who didn’t know the difference between good ammo and bad. There were also some experienced shooters who forgot to show us all of the ammo they brought, which lead to concerning safety violations on the range. This forced us to review our policy and require all shooters to purchase their .223/5.56 ammo from us. We know that this decision was inconvenient for our shooters. We know it lost us some regular customers, and even some members, but the safety of our shooters and the preservation of our equipment was our higher priority.
We’re proud to announce today that we’re relaxing our ammo policy just a little bit. Starting today, Sept. 19th, annual members will no longer be required to purchase their .223/5.56 ammo from us. So, if you are an annual member of the range you may bring your own .223/5.56 ammo to shoot during your range session. We will still check it to verify it is safe to shoot on the range. We still will not allow any STEEL CORE or STEEL JACKETED ammo on the range. We still will not allow tracer ammunition on the range. We’re still going to unload your magazines and check every round before it goes out on the range. Any member or day shooter found in violation of the ammo policy will face disciplinary action, up to and including banning from the facility.
We know that our members are just as invested in the success of our range as we are. We’re counting on you to help us keep the shooters and the equipment out there safe. If you see an unsafe condition, be friendly and helpful when you take the shooter aside and let them know they’re violating the rules. If they continue to violate the rules, or you don’t feel comfortable talking to them about it, let the range staff know what’s going on and we’ll be glad to speak with them.
We hope you find our new policy enjoyable, and we look forward to seeing you on the range.
-Jeff