Air rifle range in/near Dublin. Not ucd

bpb101

Hey lads and ladies. I'm looking for the closest air rifle range that have club guns. In or near Dublin, besides ucd and trinity

Why?- I am the chairperson of the new DIT rifle club. We have been in contact with trinity and ucd but trinity can't accommodate us, and ucd have asked their sports council but have yet to get back to me

We be hopefully firing .22 shortbore but I would like to get some air rifles in on the side
Maybe a bit of clays to finish the year with dcu

It wasn't me!

Hi, very glad to hear of a new college rifle club starting up. Will you have smallbore facilities in town or how do you plan on going about it? Best of luck with it, and feel free to post here or PM for advice. Expanding the number of colleges involved is the best thing that could happen for the rest of us. I've been involved with the club in Trinity for six years now and any information I can provide you're welcome to.

Sparks

Closest air rifle range to town would be either WTSC (which is 8km north of Navan) or RRPC (which is in Rathdrum). Neither is really "close" if you're thinking of bussing students out there for an evening's training though.

rowa

Are 8 or 12 ft/lb air rifles treated the same as firearms with regard to range regulations ? Or could a range be set up in a large room or sports hall like it is with archery ? There was a large sports hall on the top floor of the building in the linen hall when i was at dit.

It wasn't me!

rowa wrote: »

Are 8 or 12 ft/lb air rifles treated the same as firearms with regard to range regulations ? Or could a range be set up in a large room or sports hall like it is with archery ? There was a large sports hall on the top floor of the building in the linen hall when i was at dit.

There are different levels in the range construction guidelines pertaining to airgun facilities. They're not massively difficult but they'd still want to be a fairly permanent facility rather than something you share with another sport.

Sparks

You can set up a decent enough temporary facility for one-off events for airgun, it's been done by both DURC for their Air Open before they switched to using UCD's range for events:





Though those target-changers-in-a-box rigs didn't work so well the last time they were used (the strings pulled the target towards the table and the tables slid on the floor just far enough for the strings to get slack and when they're slack, they slip off the pulleys. It was a bit of a disaster and the event got derecognised, which is why we switched to holding the events in UCD instead). You can get round that with a better design: WTSC did this to run several national events includiing the airgun championships in the local community hall:








The problem is that if it's not a one-off event but a more permanent sort of thing where several clubs are sharing the space, you run into two issues - firstly the effort needed to effectively demolish and rebuild the range every time you want to use it; and secondly, a more serious health issue because the spalled lead and particulates from the pellets hitting the backstop builds up and if you're in (say) a shared basketball/football/whatever court, then those poor sods wind up breathing in lead dust while training, getting it on their skin (where either it gets in by the pores or if it's on the arms, migrates towards the hands from where it's ingested).

That is not really a good idea, given the adverse effects of lead on humans...

tac foley

I've been shooting lead since I was six, and I'm now sixty-seven, and I'm not quite dead yet from lead ingestion.

At least half of ALL my shooting, including over forty years of competetive pistol shooting, was carried out indoors, and some week evenings we shot 300-500 rounds of .38 Special - three times a week and more at weekends.

Not saying there isn't a very low-grade risk, but scaring the almight sh*te out of a beginner in indoor shooting with .177 pellets with horror pics is not really kosher.

My opinion only, of course.

tac

IRLConor

It's less about scaring the OP, and more about pre-empting the odd questions/complaints that are inevitable with a shared facility in a heavily-regulated and risk-averse organisation like a university.

Most shooters are smart enough not to eat the pellets but someone seeing lead dust in a basketball court will very quickly start a "won't someone please think of the children" campaign if the shooters don't work hard to avoid it.

Sparks

tac foley wrote: »

I've been shooting lead since I was six, and I'm now sixty-seven, and I'm not quite dead yet from lead ingestion.

At least half of ALL my shooting, including over forty years of competetive pistol shooting, was carried out indoors, and some week evenings we shot 300-500 rounds of .38 Special - three times a week and more at weekends.

Not saying there isn't a very low-grade risk, but scaring the almight sh*te out of a beginner in indoor shooting with .177 pellets with horror pics is not really kosher.

My opinion only, of course.

tac

Tac, you're not medically qualified and neither am I, so we defer to the medical profession on the toxicity of lead. They studied it in some detail and unless you like the sound of the following symptoms, I'd try to avoid it:

Possible complications include:

• Behavior or attention problems
• Failure at school
• Hearing problems
• Kidney damage
• Reduced IQ
• Slowed body growth

The symptoms of lead poisoning may include:

• Abdominal pain and cramping (usually the first sign of a high, toxic dose of lead poison)
• Aggressive behavior
• Anemia
• Constipation
• Difficulty sleeping
• Headaches
• Irritability
• Loss of previous developmental skills (in young children)
• Low appetite and energy
• Reduced sensations

Also note that those who the OP are talking about are not six but are going to be in the 16-18 bracket and the medical folk give stronger warnings the younger the people involved in lead posioning cases are:

Lead is much more harmful to children than adults because it can affect children's developing nerves and brains. The younger the child, the more harmful lead can be. Unborn children are the most vulnerable.

Also note that it's not a case of if you don't physically eat the lead that night at the range that everything's fine:

it is more common for lead poisoning to build up slowly over time. This occurs from repeated exposure to small amounts of lead. In this case, there may not be any obvious symptoms. Over time, even low levels of lead exposure can harm a child's mental development. The health problems get worse as the level of lead in the blood gets higher.

And note that when smallbore shooters were studied by the medical profession for lead levels, they found that:

RESULTS:
REd cell lead levels were elevated at the end of season (mean 2.64 mumol/L) and lower (mean 1.60 mumol/L) in the preseason samples. The average red cell lead level of the male shooters was 2.4 times normal and is comparable to the levels found in many occupationally exposed groups. Maximum air lead levels were 210 micrograms/m3, more than 2 times the Department of Labour OSH workplace exposure standard TWA of 100 micrograms/m3. Analysis of dust samples showed that dust at this range contained 24% to 36% lead.

CONCLUSION:
Although the mean time spent shooting was only 70 minutes per week the blood lead levels are similar to those previously reported for full time instructors at pistol ranges. This data confirms that lead exposure in recreational users of indoor small bore rifle ranges is a significant problem.

When they say "occupationally exposed groups" by the way - for those who've not heard of this pretty well-known study -- they're talking about lead foundry workers who work all day in an enclosed building with large amounts of molten lead...

And lastly, note that despite all of this, I wasn't saying the shooters were the ones at risk - the guys who come in afterwards to play football and who spend an hour running around breathing deeply and sweating while running through the dust and lead particulates in the air by the targets, are the ones at risk. Most target shooters (most of us who stay in the sport for a long time anyway) generally don't get into the habit of going down to the targets and running around breathing deeply and sweating for an hour or so after shooting.





tl;dr - It's a real problem. Wash your hands after shooting in cold water and don't play football by the targets and you'll avoid it. Spend your days licking air rifle pellets and you probably will need medical help down the line. And if you're building a new range, you need a dedicatedish facility (you might be able to share it with sports like archery where everyone stays at one end of the room).

bpb101

hey lads.
thanks for the help. our main problem is that we would not have the air rifles and it would require the use of the club guns... As i said , our main discipline would be .22 rifles. we are in talks with bronabreana in tallaght.
in the coming years, we could look into a range of our own in probable grangroman . thats later down the line. were just set up so all theses things are in the future. The College is not up for the idea of keeping guns in the college, even air rifles, so this will be a problem.
Their was a failed attempted of somebody setting up the rifle club 10 years ago. The person wanted to keep firearms in a locked room in the college. Not to the sports councils approval. So buying guns are not an option. Archery actually use belvedere college sports hall. The hall in dit is used for weights and some other random things.

As for eating the lead pellets, well, that escalated quickly:eek:

Sparks

bpb101 wrote: »

The College is not up for the idea of keeping guns in the college, even air rifles, so this will be a problem.

Yeah, that's a good reason why you need friendly staff onside to argue for you.

Their was a failed attempted of somebody setting up the rifle club 10 years ago.

I remember that It could have worked, but... no staff support.
If there's a (very) local firearms dealer nearby, that might be a solution - they could do the storage for an annual fee maybe? Most ranges in Ireland tend to have a tame RFD around for that kind of thing...

bpb101

Sparks wrote: »

Yeah, that's a good reason why you need friendly staff onside to argue for you.

I remember that It could have worked, but... no staff support.

was that you :L ?

Sparks wrote: »

If there's a (very) local firearms dealer nearby, that might be a solution - they could do the storage for an annual fee maybe? Most ranges in Ireland tend to have a tame RFD around for that kind of thing...

there was a shooting shop in temple bar, they have ceased to sell guns. Very good idea actually.

Sparks

bpb101 wrote: »

was that you :L ?

No, I was in the DURC committee at the time and the chap asked us for help, but we were in the same bind then as DURC are now with the college and access to facilities for non-alumni.

there was a shooting shop in temple bar, they have ceased to sell guns. Very good idea actually.

Rory's? I know we bought a few things there from time to time over the years, but they weren't really aimed at our sort of shooting. But worth talking to them just to find out if they could help (and if not, if they knew someone who could).

I suppose you could also ask the local garda station, but I'd treat that as an absolute last-ditch approach, I strongly suspect the answer would be "No" quickly followed by "What are you doing?" and a pointed inspection.

Sparks

Oh, and if you haven't gotten in touch with John Guinane (the Firearms Range Inspector) yet, best to do so now, well ahead of when you need to. If for no other reason than that he's been to nearly every range in the country at this stage and would be a solid source of advice.

bpb101

Sparks wrote: »

No, I was in the DURC committee at the time and the chap asked us for help, but we were in the same bind then as DURC are now with the college and access to facilities for non-alumni.


Rory's? I know we bought a few things there from time to time over the years, but they weren't really aimed at our sort of shooting. But worth talking to them just to find out if they could help (and if not, if they knew someone who could).

i have had a word with him about a quote for ear and eye protection, but he didnt have the stuff.

Sparks wrote: »

I suppose you could also ask the local garda station, but I'd treat that as an absolute last-ditch approach, I strongly suspect the answer would be "No" quickly followed by "What are you doing?" and a pointed inspection.

i wouldnt think they would be up for the idea.

i will get in contact with John Guinane in the next few days. Thanks for the help.