Fantastic Indoor Range

[JAG2955]

I went to Trop Gun Shop to try out one of my new toys over the 4th of July weekend. My stamp came in for my Osprey suppressor, so I got to shoot that for the first time. Let me just say that their indoor range is one of the most impressive ranges anywhere I've ever seen.

The range counter is separate from anything else, kind of like a mini counter/booth with rental rifles and pistols and ammo behind the counter. The employee asked if I had ever been there before, and when I said no, he handed me a small Samsung tablet that autoplayed a short National Shooting Sports Foundation range safety brief followed by some range-specific rules. I filled out a waiver, and then the employee asked what else I needed. I grabbed some targets and some .38 special for my M&P340. He handed me a keycard with a lane number on it and a slip of paper to hand to the RSO.

In order to get into the range, you have to swipe the keycard over one of those neat no-touch sensors to get into the range reception room. No unapproved personnel could get in. The RSO waited in there behind bulletproof glass and took our keycard and slip of paper, where he wrote our entry time. He asked if I had ever used their target retrieval system before. Nope, so he showed me. Touch screen mounted on the left of each stall. Carriages were programmable for any distance input in meters, and also for pre-designated courses of fire. If you selected those, the target would go out to a distance, turn 90deg, then face for a short amount of time. It would do that at various ranges and times until it would return. You could also adjust the lighting in your individual stall.

Walking in, you felt a breeze from the ventilation system. Probably a full 3 mph breeze across the whole range. No worries about lead contamination there. The front half of every stall was opaque, possibly a thick composite, but the back half of all the dividers were made out of bulletproof plexiglass (2" thick) or similar.

Here it is (with a pic of the downrange area): http://www.tropgun.com/indoor-range/

[First Shirt]

I wondered where this was, since I hadn't seen anything like it in the Jacksonville area. Figures, it'd be somewhere that I will probably never go!

[JAG2955]

No, the last indoor range I went to in Jacksonville was unairconditioned, had a door to the outside propped open for ventilation, had a few burned out fluorescent light tubes, a target carriage laying on the ground (shot down), bullet holes in the floor, ceiling, walls, and stall dividers, and I saw a guy hit by a ricochet.

[Windy Wilson]

Rangemasters in San Luis Obispo has a beautiful indoor range, with a rubber floor and acoustic walls, but they don't seem to post pictures of it on the website.

[chem light]

and I saw a guy hit by a ricochet.

What? When was this?

Personally, that range entertains the crap out of me. All those brand new LCpls trying to show off by taking their girlfriends to the range and "teach them how to shoot." And then leaving shotgun blast patterns on their zombie targets, placed an impressive seven yards from the firing line, essentially spending 20 minutes turning money into noise. My internal monologue from these trips keeps me entertained and giggling days later.

Hell, if I weren't afraid of being shot or coming out a few IQ points shorter, I'd go there more often.