To be blunt:
I am not concerned with the backstop. I am concerned with the baffles.
I stopped .223 sales and use as there were a LOT of holes on range A (mostly members side) and this posed a real possibility for rounds to leave the building.
Yes, you can buy frangible in a lot of places, but we also found a number of members refilling boxes of frang with other .223. This again posed serious safety concerns and most of the holes.
If I was made aware that any staff member was letting in outside Frangible, I would have fired them as well. This is a blatant violation of one of the conditions applied to us by the Ontario CFO to even let is use frangible in our range. This is well posted and the staff and member put us all in jeopardy by ignoring this.
Contracts have been signed and work will begin in the next few months on the backstops, baffles and HVAC with all work to be completed within 10-14 weeks (yes, weeks). It is a complicated, project with lots of moving parts and coordination to be undertaking.
However, even after completion I will be limiting the use of centrefire rifle cartidges to certain times as we want to encourage families with young'ins to come in. A line full of 7.5 inch ARs will not do that.
If anyone wants to leave because they feel slighted, I am happy to refund a prorated membership fee. Simply contact me directly and I will organize this without haste.
These range upgrades are costing almost $400k and will give this facility a new lease on life with increased safety and versatility. They will also provide the shooters with greatly increased comforts such as air cooling during the summer.
The majority of snide complaints I hear at Target from members about the walk ins are completely unfounded. The safety issues we have are not with the newwbies, they are almost exclusively the old guard... Complacency breeds mistakes.
I am extremely happy with the Target facility and want to make it the best possible range, but it takes a commitment from the unsupervised members to not shoot it up and ruin a good thing for everyone.
JR