[ Home Shooting Ranges ]

Building Your Own Home Shooting Range: A Comprehensive Guide

When it comes to having a great understanding of a home shooting range, it is always a good idea to first learn the process involved with building your own home shooting range and/or custom outdoor gun range design. So on that note, Spire Ranges has taken the liberty to share some amazing information below to help you better appreciate all of the intricacies associated with building a home shooting range.

Understanding Home Shooting Ranges

A custom outdoor or home shooting range, firing range, or gun range for your commercial or private property use is a technical facility designed for firearms qualifications and/or training. Some home shooting ranges are operated by armed forces or law enforcement agencies, though the majority of ranges are privately owned and cater to recreational shooters. Supervisory personnel are responsible for ensuring that all weapon safety policies along with government regulations are followed closely at all times.

Types of Home Shooting Ranges

A home shooting range can be indoor or outdoor and may be confined to certain kinds of firearms; for example: handguns or rifles. They can also specialize in certain shooting sports like skeet shooting or Air Pistol/Rifle. Most indoor ranges confine the use of certain strong calibers, rifles, or completely automatic weapons.

Indoor vs. Outdoor Shooting Ranges

In urban places, many home shooting ranges will undoubtedly be indoors. Indoor ranges offer protection from inclement weather conditions and can be operated around the clock under controlled environmental conditions. Outdoor shooting ranges are typically found far away from populated regions due to concerns of overall safety, noise pollution, and dirt contamination.

Components of an Indoor Shooting Range

Indoor firing ranges are usually constructed as standalone structures, even though they may be housed in larger buildings in the basement or such. The basic components of the majority of indoor firing ranges consist of firing lanes, targets, and a bullet trap/backstop. Design considerations can fluctuate depending on the planned use, but they all must address the requirements for general operation as well as to provide ballistic protection, safety controls, proper ventilation, acoustic isolation along with appropriate lighting.

Shooting Range Design and Construction

Shooting range walls are usually constructed of poured concrete, precast concrete, or masonry cube. The walls have to be impenetrable and provide adequate ballistic protection from stray bullets and back splatter. Floors are constructed from compact reinforced concrete with a smooth surface finish. Floors are usually slanted slightly from up-range supporting the bullet trap downrange to allow for improved maintenance and cleaning.

Control Rooms and Stations

Control rooms or stations house the fundamental controls for the home shooting range equipment, communication, lights, and security. The controls are operated by the designated official responsible for operation and management. The control station needs to provide an unobstructed line of sight of the firing lanes and all shooters. Control stations are usually constructed of concrete cubes with bulletproof observation windows.

Backstops and Bullet Traps

Backstops and bullet traps have been used to absorb the energy from your bullet and capture it to prevent overflight beyond the allotted space. Backstops come in an assortment of designs and therefore are usually constructed of impenetrable metal plates.

Additional Spaces in Indoor Ranges

Most indoor home firing ranges provide additional spaces including a restroom, cleaning room for weapons, a classroom and/or office space, a lounge, storage area and a maintenance room (if space is available and the homeowner wants to run a business out of their basement).

Shooting Booths

Passageways are traditionally used to physically isolate the firing from the adjoining places. Some indoor/outdoor firing gun ranges are equipped with shooting booths to provide shooters with a defined firing space and to reduce the potential hazard from misfires and ejected bullet cartridges from adjoining shooters.

Target Systems

Target systems consist of a target plus a target control system. Targets for indoor home firing ranges are usually a paper sheet or piece of corrugated cardboard with a printed target image on the sheet. The target provider system allows the shooter to operate much more efficiently and securely by transporting the target within the firing lane.

Ventilation System

A critical component in the design and appropriate operation of the indoor firing range is the ventilation system. Appropriate ventilation decreases a shooter’s vulnerability to airborne lead particles as well as other combustion-able byproducts. Ventilation systems consist of supply and exhaust air systems and associated ductwork.

Lighting

Lighting in the home shooting range consists of: control stall, orange/red space, shooting booth, along with downrange lighting systems. Control booth lighting is usually manually controlled and consists of overall lighting and low-level lighting used during particular shooting conditions.

Safety Control Systems

Safety control systems have been installed to protect the shooters during malfunction or emergency situations. These systems could include warning lights, alarm bells, and air-flow and filtration monitors.

Outdoor Shooting Ranges

Outdoor home designed shooting ranges are used for longer-distance shooting up to 1,200 yards. Training might also require exposure to the elements like wind or rain.

Target Types in Outdoor Ranges

Outdoor shooting range plans are designed to contain all fired shots. This necessitates a higher retaining wall behind the target line called a back-stop or stop-butt. A backstop comprises an earth mound, sandbag barrier or specially designed funnel-shaped cubes to catch and prevent misaligned shots, errant projectile ricochets, or shots going beyond the boundaries of the shooting selection.

Small-Bore and Centerfire Rifle Ranges

Small-bore (.22 long rifle grade) gun ranges are typically 50 meters to accommodate the Olympic 50 m Rifle event, but they can stretch to 200 meters. These collections are found across the globe as part of varied cadet shooting programs, sometimes reduced to 25 meters. Target shooting range for larger-caliber centerfire rifles are no shorter than 100 meters, except in the case of Zero ranges used for setting or checking the receptive or aperture areas of the rifle.

Clay Pigeon Shooting and Specialized Ranges

Specialist ranges cater for assorted clay pigeon shooting events require special layouts and equipment.

Safety and Licensing

Regardless of whether home shooting ranges or outdoor gun ranges; you should always wear eye protection along with hearing protection (ear muffs or ear plugs) at all times when within the defined boundaries of the firing range. Anyone nearby is vulnerable to gunpowder discharge or cartridge primers, that can be inhaled or can burn or damage skin or clothing.

Conclusion

If you are ready to build your own custom home shooting range in your basement or perhaps you have your sights on an outdoor shooting range design, contact Spire Ranges today. We are the premier experts when it comes to customized personal and commercial home shooting ranges!