Has your club ever been victum to vandalism or theft?

Yes at the local Archery club. Security cameras and a recording device were installed. The individuals were caught eventually. The presence of the cameras cut way down on lots of incidents.

Not that I know of. Of course we have a live in caretaker at both of our ranges.

OR, are you sure that old guy is still alive?

Jerry G wrote:OR, are you sure that old guy is still alive?

Yeah, I see Dan all the time.

But the guy at the Hellgate range... Last time I saw him he was trying to start a weed eater with one arm in a sling. Come to think of it I haven't seen him him since then.

Our range has had issues of the steel targets on the rifle and pistol bays being shot up with high power rifles. We put our silhouette targets away after each match so they haven't seen any abuse, but the portable target stands have some nice clean holes in them that are roughly 30 caliber. The biggest issue is trash and junk left on the range. People bring out stuff to shoot and leave it on the range for others to clean up. Recently I found pieces of several bowling balls, not pins, laying all over the range.

Our range in Yuma is open to the public without supervision of any kind, you cannot imagine what junk gets left out there and what vandalism we have to deal with on a weekly basis.

Our club is out in the middle of no where and has unsupervised ranges. Back in 2005 I made four real nice rifle racks for the silhouette range. Not one month after delivering them, some SOB put a half dozen .45 ACP rounds into one of them. The brass was still nearby. A couple made full penetration of doubled up 2x4's. Some wood filler and paint made the holes go away.

With out a doubt the silhouette range is the most popular range on the property. With the closing of a couple of metro Denver ranges and the rapid influx of new people to the area, our club is growing in membership. The exploding popularity of shooting steel at long range is a big draw to shooters that have never experienced it. Our club is one of few around that allows shooting steel targets. Members can provide their own steel, or we have a variety of metal targets to shoot at. My past work has always given me access to scrap metal steel ideal for targets. I am the person responsible for providing and maintaining all steel gongs and metal on that range.

This summer we removed all softer steel under 100 yards to eliminate fragments coming back to the firing line. No incidents of injury were reported, but the line cover roof has plenty of lead and copper shards on it and washed into the gutters.

We spent the money to buy and install four AR500 18" dia. 1/2" thick swinging gongs, two at 50 yds. and two at 100 yds. I just knew it was a matter of time before some one would hit them with AP ammo. Within 30 days all but one had holes clean through. One alone had 14 holes. Many of these "new to shooting" members have no idea what kind ammo they bought online or from a friend. Almost all of our softer gongs have some hard penetrator cores still sticking out of them a little.

The other crap is what Jerry said. Members shooting water jugs, pop cans, tannerite exploding targets, all against club rules, and leaving the mess for others to pick up. To this day I am surprised that our old Ford range truck is still unmolested.
http://crci.org/

And still nobody ever sees anyone do this stuff.how can the vandals be there when no one else is?thats the part i don't get.

Before our card only gate and cameras we had every manner of jerky boy vandalism. We even had a 'secret pisser'....the guy would go into one of the bathroom stalls and pee in a corner. Then a 50BMG guy took some AP to a ram swinger that is made of 7/8th T-1...they only went in part way. Then a guy with an AK disintegrated a bunch of target stands....we caught him and sent him away. The cameras and the electronic gate have eliminated a bunch of fools ....never did catch the secret pisser. Almost forgot about a guy who shot the power transformer behind the club house....

Bob McAlice,i built a couple hp rifle racks and within 2 weeks somebody shot through one while it was on the firing line.

This all makes me sad. No wonder we can't have nice things anymore. Our silhouette ranges are on our members only side, so there is a gate with a padlock there. You aren't allowed to set up or shoot any targets like bowling pins etc at any of our ranges. We don't get too much of that kind of stuff. We also take in all of our targets (including swingers) otherwise I'm sure they would be full of holes. Never seen anyone shoot at our rifle racks. That just seems...Odd.

I just keep shaking my head. These are the type of people that make all gun owners look bad. *sigh*

Something else I just remembered. I think it was last year at Lander, Wy. Some fool put a cartoon likeness of our dear national leader on an inside wall of the line cover. You can guess what happened to it at a rifle range. I guess you can't blame the shooter for perforating the wall in this case.

Down here at Tucon, we find brass all over the HP range. I think they assult the berms while the range master is sleeping in the office. We have some chicken swingers thaty look like swiss cheese.

We have had an ongoing debate about range usage...should we reduce competitions to allow more range time for the 'casual' shooter. I have grown weary of the non-competitive shooter (excluding retired competitive shooters) as their ranks are filled with the irresponsible, immature and inconsiderate....Its that group that vandalizes or from their ranks do we find our culprits. So when an applicant to our club says he has NO interest in any competition and has got his SKS all cleaned and ready to rock...that ole boy goes on the long waiting list