We have prepared two lists for you to refer to when going to a range for some shooting practice. The list that follows, on this page, is if you’re going to a regular ‘square’ range – that is, a range with each shooter having a separate lane with a fixed firing position at one end and a target in front of it.
The second list is a gear checklist for going to a ‘tactical’ range, where there is a more flexible approach to firing positions and activities, and where you might be doing some more extending/demanding type practice.
Baseball style cap
The ‘bill’ in the front of this style of cap will provide some protection against ejected casings flying in your face, and possibly getting caught between your safety glasses and your eyes – a very nasty experience indeed.
Remember that you’re sometimes having to protect not just against your own brass as it flies out of your gun, but also protecting against the brass of the shooter next to you too, so don’t tell yourself ‘there’s no way my gun would eject brass in my face’ because maybe the problem is not with your ejected brass, but from someone else’s brass instead.
High necked shirt
This will help reduce the possibility of ejected casings falling down the front of your shirt or blouse – a particularly unpleasant experience for ladies, but not very nice for men either.
Closed shoes
Sandals with socks would also be acceptable, but you don’t want to have open sandal type shoes and nothing between your feet and shoes – again to protect you against hot brass falling onto your feet and possibly getting trapped between your foot and shoe.
Eye protection
Shooter safety glasses are essential and required on every range we’ve ever visited in the last some years (they used to be optional but now seem to be mandatory).
Most ranges will rent or even loan you safety glasses for free, but we generally recommend you buy your own. Rental and loaner safety glasses are often scratched and slightly dirty, and while you could argue this adds a useful element of adversity to your training, it is better that you can have a choice of when and if your vision is less than perfect rather than be forced to accept it all the time.
Shooting glasses are available in an amazing rainbow of color choices. For indoor shooting, most of the time, simply choose clear glasses. For outdoor shooting in bright light, we recommend polarized glasses. We don’t think any of the fancy orange and other colors really make any difference at all to your shooting ability.
Make sure the safety glasses have side protection so they wrap around the front of your face.
Hearing Protection
Please see our separate article on how to choose the best hearing protection for your time on the range.
Most ranges will rent or even loan you hearing protection for free. Typically this will be a set of ear muffs with passive sound blocking, and only an average sound block rating.
We recommend you consider buying your own electronic hearing protection, particularly if you’re going to be shooting as part of a group or needing to clearly hear an instructor. Some training schools now insist on all students using electronic hearing for that very reason.
Ammunition
Well, so this might seem obvious, but one not quite so obvious thing is to always bring more ammo than you think you’ll need.
The worst that can happen is that some of your ammo gets a free ride to and back from the range. But maybe while you’re attending your class you get a chance to do a couple of bonus courses of fire, or if you’re just casually plinking, maybe you get into a ‘groove’ and want to keep going more than you planned to.
Just because you have extra ammo in your range bag, you shouldn’t feel compelled to shoot it, but there’s nothing sadder than running out of ammo and either missing out on a valuable ‘bonus’ training opportunity, or having to cut short an enjoyable self paced session, and/or needing to buy some possibly over-priced ammo from the range while you’ve got thousands of bargain priced rounds at home lying around unused.
Speed Loader
Any time you’re going to be loading magazines, you should use a Speed Loader to save yourself the difficulty and hassle of trying to thumb in and squeeze down rounds unaided.
It isn’t quite so bad if you’re loading a low capacity single stack magazine, but if you’re trying to get every last round into your 17 round magazine repeatedly over a day where you’ll be firing several hundred rounds of ammo, you’re going to find the added benefit and leverage of a speed loader invaluable.
There are a couple of different styles of speed loader. The simplest and smallest are ones that fit over the top of a magazine and you press down on them. These are simple and easy and great to keep in your pocket. Sometimes they are included for free when you buy a new gun – Glock and Springfield XD guns usually come with one of these. The Adco Super Thumb reloaders are available for a wide range of caliber/magazine combinations.
There are also more complicated ones with levers going out to the side which greatly reduce the amount of force you need to apply, but they are bigger and bulkier and can require a bit more dexterity and practice to be able to use them. However, the time spent in becoming proficient with a speed loader device is definitely time well spent.
HKS
and Lula are two good brands of these types of speed loaders. They come in different configurations for different calibers and magazine times.
Targets and Pasters
If you’re simply going to a regular range to do some regular plinking and practice, you’ll need some sort of targets to shoot at.
The range will of course be happy to sell you targets, ranging from small black and white generic bullseye targets up to huge full color posters of zombies and animals and all sorts of other things. You can find yourself paying anything from a quarter per target up to $5 each for some of the really fancy targets.
Much of the time, all you really need is a thick nibbed Sharpie type black felt pen marker and a handful of sheets of regular 8.5″ x 11″ copy/printing paper. Draw some cross-hairs or circles on the sheets of paper to give you some aiming points, and that’s all you need.
If your aim isn’t quite so good, get legal size paper – 8.5″ x 14″, or even double size 11″ x 17″ paper, so you don’t run the risk of having shots go high and hit the target carrier. Ranges really don’t like that, and will probably charge you for any damage that results.
On the other hand, if you do buy one of the very expensive fancy targets, you’ll probably want it to last as long as possible. One way to do this is of course to miss the target every time you shoot at it!
But if your shots are landing more or less where they should, you can tape up the holes between courses of fire, using anything from masking tape and up from there.
If it is a photo image color target, you might want to use some clear adhesive plastic squares to stick over the holes and to smooth the paper back together. But if it is just a regular black and white target, bring a sheet each of black and white round sticky labels and press the stickers over the holes. Labels that are either 3/4″ or 1″ in diameter are probably about right; depending on the caliber of rounds you are shooting.
This will massively extend the life of your multi-dollar target, at a cost of only pennies for the sticky labels.
Spares
You don’t need to be a walking spare parts warehouse, but think of the equipment you are taking with you and think ahead to what might break or need replacing.
Be sure to have spare batteries for your electronic hearing protectors, for example. If there is anything else which might sometimes give problems, make sure you can address those challenges.
If you’re going to an outdoor range, consider packing both a set of clear and a set of Polaroid wrap-around shooting/safety glasses.
We generally have a multi-tipped screwdriver and a pair of pliers in our range bags, sometimes extra tools as well, and always one of the tiny but powerful little LED lights.
Extra Equipment for Tactical Ranges
Be sure to read our second article, listing extra equipment to bring with you when visiting a tactical range, too.
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