Can’t let citizens train citizens! NOPE No Room For That, Gottta have…
“Layton, North Salt Lake, Syracuse, Kaysville, Farmington, Bountiful, Clearfield and Sunset police officers use the range for training, as well as officers with Utah Adult Probation and Parole, Davis County Attorney’s Office, Utah Division of Natural Resources, Federal Protective Service, Internal Revenue Service, Dept. of Defense, U.S. Customs, U.S. Treasury and Hill Air Force Base, according to the Davis County Sheriff’s Office.”
Reading the entire linked article, this is in no way an anti-2A issue as the header suggests. Further, it is not about restricting citizen training of citizens. Rather, the situation has been a management, contractual, and communication mess:
The managing volunteer organization failed to maintain separate public and LEO training periods and communicate the schedules to the participating LEO departments.
Significantly, the managing volunteer organization failed to maintain appropriate fiscal management, particularly by letting their non-profit status expire in 2013, not renewing it until the audit began in 2024, and failing to maintain sufficient financial expense and receipts records during the ensuing 11 years.
-While the range had historically allowed selected mixed-use periods on the range with LEOs and public on the range at the same time, when the sheriff declared new policy forbidding mixed-use periods (which personally I agree with, see below*), the managing volunteer organization failed to resolve the issue and negotiate anew contract to reflect the new policy.
When the sheriff insisted that the public use periods be limited to weekends, he failed to recognize that the fee-based public use periods were what paid for operation and maintenance of the range that was used broadly by many LEO departments for free. Here, I blame the sheriff for failing to negotiate a realistic approach to departmental training needs balanced by financial realities. Fr instance, a new contract could have shifted financial recepts from the public use ot a mix of public and departmental use fees.
*** On the mixed use periods, recognize that all LEO training of necessity includes holster draw-and-fire drills and movement while drawing and shooting drills. Safety considerations during such operations are much higher than routine square-range lane shooting without holster draw. As such, establishing safety policies to segregate the more advanced LEO training and public self-defense drills from general public use by both location and timing would be most appropriate.
The volunteer range officers no longer have a quality range to use in exchange for time instead of money.
The general public loses access to a convenient, popular, and reasonably priced fee-based range.
The myriad LEO departments lose free access to a properly designed training and practice range; each of those departments is now going to have to budget for range operation & maintenance costs for as well as schedule their own range officers and range safety officers to manage the range during operational hours, removing them from other departmental duties.
The general public loses because now tax dollars have to shift into the LEO deparetment budgets to cover #3.
I know that 2A Brotherhood is always upset about closing Ranges but it’s nothing even close to:
April 1, 2024, the Board of Davis County Commissioners held a public meeting to discuss concerns relating to the general public’s use of Davis County’s shooting range, including the contract between Davis County and Wahsatch Shooters.
April 9, 2024, the Board of Davis County Commissioners requested the Davis County Auditor’s Office to perform a performance audit relating to Wahsatch Shooter’s performance of the contract between Davis County and Wahsatch Shooters.
July 23, 2024, the Davis County Auditor’s Office issued a performance audit regarding the contract between Davis County and Wahsatch Shooters. This performance audit identified, among other things, a number of concerns relating to Wahsatch Shooter’s performance under the contract between Davis County and Wahsatch Shooters.
A government audit that closes a private/public range gives me pause. Then when I see who ends up with the range I have to think, this whole thing is in support of more more more “law enforcement” and less less less citizens trained.
Both sides of this made many mistakes, as someone who owned my own business the manager of the range cost the public to lose out. The Sheriff caused the loss for the LEO, bad business and management from both.
So why is the public always excluded from training to draw, move and fire? These are vital self defense skills and the excuse of “unsafe or cost of liability” seem to be ways of denying important learning opportunities to citizens.
The public is not always excluded from training to draw, move and fire. I have taken such training many times, and have taught it, too. The key information is that when training in draw, move, fire, the range safety protocols are seriously enhanced and enforced more stringently than routine square range in-lane point and shoot activity.
The more active self defense (SD) and LEO style training requires more Range Safety Officers (RSOs) and (preferably) more highly experienced RSOs. The key logic is you do not want general public square range shooters on the same range at the same time as the SD/LEO activities are happening, lest they think they can start doing the same thing without the requisite training and safety oversight.
For example, ranges that allow SD/LEO style drills normally limit to only approved customers (they pass a basic skills test), and allow only those participating in the SD/LEO drills on a bay set aside for this activity.
There is a couple Ranges in my location with completely different policies.
Most of the Indoor Ranges do not allow holster draw. RangeUSA has particular days for “holster draw” for shooters who attended their “Advanced Handgun Class”. This way they know what to expect.
One Outdoor Range allows holster draw if you are Firearm Instructor and you passed their qualifications.
The other story is when you setup a class with group of your own students. You can “do whatever you want” after your class agenda is accepted by Range Management… but the liability is taken from the Range and moved to Instructor’s Insurance.
So as you can see most of the “public access” depends on who takes the responsibility and for what… and we all know any firearm related incidents, especially negligence is not an easy task to be resolved.
I, personally , as an Instructor do not have any trust to students with the firearm around me… so I’m not surprised that Range Management or Owners try to avoid problems.
I do miss my former range. It is also closed now, but not from any government action. The new owners took a thriving gun store and associated range (3 miles away) and ran them both into bankruptcy in about 3 years.
The store was pretty good as LGS’s go but the range was great, I spent most of my time in the pistol bays but there were also rifle ranges out to 300 yds. There were two separate pistol bays, each bermed on three sides, 30 yards deep, with room for 10 or 12 shooters under cover. I tended to go on weekday mornings and quite often had a bay, if not the entire place, all to myself. On those days I could do pretty much any kind of training I wanted to do; draw, move, fire, rapid fire, move forward ahead of the ‘shooting line’, multiple target sets, just to name a few.
My current range is tiny by comparison. Room for 6-8 shooters max and many rules about drawing, moving, rate of fire, etc… I have developed a relationship with the owner, who also lives and operates a gun store on the site. When I have the range to myself he allows me to ‘bend’ the rules a bit, but only up to a point. It still beats the h*ll out of any indoor range I’ve ever heard about.
And based on the results of the audit, it appears that was for several good reasons related to financial propriety, communication, and maybe even safety (general public on same range same time as LEO training).
I don’t understand why citizen self-defense training would not include presentation from the holster. That is not an advanced LEO skill, but an essential part of concealed carry and self-defense.
Drawing from the holster and holstering procedures are the most common reasons of negligent discharges (along with cleaning and loading/unloading)
I’ve seen too many people doing too many bad things during holstering and unholstering.
I can fully understand Ranges not allowing uncontrolled holster draw.
Nobody wants attend the Range with high percentage of negligent discharges. Bad reputation doesn’t bring Customers.
So I agree that these activities have a higher chance of ND. This is precisely why training being more readily available and affordable for “normal” citizens is necessary. Where I live, there is only one range within 125 miles that even allows this kind of training, one day a month and it is prohibitively expensive. It does seem that lack of availability and high cost are artificial barriers to better trained (and safer) citizens.
