Indoor ranges generally provide shooting distances to about 25 yards. Some stretch out to 50 yards, but indoors there a few the go beyond 50 yards. Some handgun indoor ranges are no more than 10 yards.

Hogan’s Alley Shooting Range

For law enforcement and deploying military various ranges are prepared to train for entry, building search and clearance operations. A ‘Hogan’s Alley’ depicts streets and buildings for practical training with pop-up or turning targets, and mimic real life about as close as you are going to get.

Live Fire Firearms Training Simulator

Electronic ranges are replacing many heavy weapons training and shoot-don’t shoot scenario training. They register hits and misses. And they present scenarios in shoot and don’t situations important in law-enforcement training.
Simulation training combines a blank firing cartridge with a small paintball to simulate combat training with non-lethal ammunition. Blanks, paintball and Air-Soft are also contributing to firearms training. But nothing beats actual live fire time at the range. Although many training alternatives exist for handgun combat, most rifle or sniper training is hands on with live ammo. A rifle needs a berm and/or bullet traps. Life fire ranges are being equipped with bullet traps that trap the expended round and minimize cleanup. Shooting Range Industries offers the best of both worlds in our custom modular shooting ranges; bullet traps that allow electronic simulation with live fire.

Duty VS Non Duty Ammo

Most police departments are shooting their qualifications with duty ammo, not reloaded or full jacketed ammo. This cycles the duty ammo and gives a more realistic training as the officer is shooting full power loads with the on-duty projectile. Special techniques and other shooting range training syllabus’ uses non-duty ammo to lessen expenses. To lesson expenses and logistics the military just uses the same ammo across the board for both duty and training.

Long Range Shooting Ranges

Only a few ranges offer shooting beyond 300 yards. But for the bench-rest shooter, ranges at 300, 600 and 1000 yards is required. A 1000-yard range is over a half-mile as a mile is 1760 yards. In Europe the distance is in meters and a 1000-meter equates to 1093.61 yards, say 1100 yards. In urban areas such long ranges shooting is difficult to find. With few exceptions 1000-yard ranges are a rural phenomenon.

Indoor VS Outdoor Shooting Ranges

For close combat and concealed or open carry, indoor ranges rain supreme. They are common in urban environments and provide many opportunities to improve your shooting skills. Indoor or outdoor range time is an important element in handgun mastery. Skeet and trap is strictly an outdoor activity. But ranges can be compact as the light loads used don’t carry far. Skeet and/or or trap is used by law enforcement for annual shotgun familiarization as shooting scores is not the best activity for shotguns. With skeet and trap you’re shooting at moving target reinforcing hand and eye coordination. Special techniques with a shotgun are taught as well. Spread, rise and ricochet techniques familiarize those with these characteristics. Shoot to point of aim with rifle type sights but shoot low with a bead sight. Spread is estimated at 1 inch per yard, with only half of the buckshot hitting a target at 30 yards. At 15 yards expect the pattern to be about 15 inches. You can expect a bead sighted shotgun to shoot 2 to 3 feet high at 10 to 20 yards. Round ball, 00 buck at 53.9 grains at about 1400 fps will retain only 74 foot pounds of energy and will drop 10 inches, that is only if it remains round and deformed. It appears that there is no experience like good time at the range to sharpen skills.