Opening a range...

Wow, only a $5 fee to rent as many guns as you want for a day? I can't imagine the range is making any money off of that.

There's a few ranges I've been to and it's a lot more than that for just one rental. And that doesn't include any full-auto firearms.
 
Rapid City (Closest major town) opened one, and besides membership they have an hourly range fee. Their range is packed.

We have one in Newcastle. This area is gun friendly and if one gets out of the city limits, zoning is near non-existent. ...

... the indoor range seldom gets used.
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That makes sense when comparing a rural town of 3,500 with a city of 70,000. In rural areas, I would expect it to be much harder to support an indoor pistol range than in a more urban environment.
Wow, only a $5 fee to rent as many guns as you want for a day? I can't imagine the range is making any money off of that.
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Some things you need to keep in mind.

What are you really selling when you let someone shoot a gun? If they put 50 or 100 rounds through a quality gun, that's probably about a thousandth of the life of the gun. If you can "sell" one thousandth shares at $5 apiece for a gun that cost you maybe $500, that's a profit of 900%.

Sure, you have to clean it now and then, but that shouldn't be a significant expense--maybe it cuts your profit to 700% or 800%.

Second, and much more importantly, every range I've been to has a rule requiring that the customer buys range ammo to shoot in range guns. Every range I've been to has pretty expensive range ammo.

Figure that for every gun the customer uses they have to buy at least one box of ammo. So now in addition to the profit you're making by selling them shares of the gun's life, you're now making profit by selling them ammunition that they must purchase if they want to shoot the gun.

Also, in order to shoot the gun, they've had to pay for a range fee and probably buy targets as well. More profit.

Finally, although this isn't as much of a return as the other factors, people coming in to rent range guns probably aren't saving their brass which means you can collect it and sell it to a ammunition remanufacturer, or perhaps as scrap.
 
$5 probably isn't the total rental price. Most places that rent full auto do not even charge for the gun, like they do on a standard rental. The price of the gun is reflected in the cost of the magazine, as full auto is usually rented on a per magazine basis.

Here is a pic of the prices at Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot this year. $50 for a magazine of 9mm!

 
The ranges around here allow your own ammo but some don't like aluminum rounds. They keep the empties if they hit the ground.

One other thing that a good range has is training. Around here, the gun stores that appeal to more than an old set of coots offer classes on self-defense and specific women's offerings.

As I said before, one outfit here died because of under capitalization and crappy, arrogant staff. Recently, we got a nice indoor range. I do have a problem with clientele (hate to be elitist) but getting stuck next to a doofus with a Tec-9 who sprays the target from top to bottom at seven yards is obnoxious. I hate tight lanes.
 
Machineguntony said:
When I priced out the construction and completion costs with land basis, it came out to a conservative $10,000,000. That's the price for a high end range. A new high end range is about to open near me, and allegedly, the total project cost was higher than $10,000,000 (according to the range and financing banks' press release) and they're still looking for additional finanacing to add sales inventory.

I find that number to be accurate and even conservative.
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At 10,000,000 dollars, that works out to 400,000 a year for 25 years and that's just the principal. It doesn't even address the multitude of additional costs like interest, insurance, salaries, utilities, etc. That is a lot of cost to cover with profit :)
 
You might want to first work for a gun store that also has an indoor range.
Might be a good way to see things from an insider's viewpoint.
 
Wow, only a $5 fee to rent as many guns as you want for a day? I can't imagine the range is making any money off of that.

There's a few ranges I've been to and it's a lot more than that for just one rental. And that doesn't include any full-auto firearms.
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I tried out several 1911s while there, cost was $5 for the guns. Now, I had to buy factory ammo from them to shoot in their guns, but the 9mm was $12.99 and the 45 was $19.99 per box of 50 which isn't out of line from any store. I was also allowed to shoot my reloads in my guns while there (many ranges do not allow that for liability reasons.)
 
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