Indoor gun ranges opening in Des Moines suburbs

JOHNSTON, Iowa (AP) - The Des Moines-metro area's first public indoor gun range will open this month in Johnston, and a second indoor facility is already in the works in Clive.

CrossRoads Shooting Sports in Johnston and Rangemasters Training Center in Clive could help fill a hole for a growing number of central Iowa gun owners.

The number of Iowans with permits to carry a gun grew from about 39,000 in 2010 to more than 220,000 in 2014, according to the Iowa Department of Public Safety's weapons permit section bureau chief.

In that same period, the number of permits in Polk County rose from 3,770 to 26,627.

The increase follows a 2011 change in state law that made Iowa a "shall issue" state for obtaining a permit to carry a weapon. Any qualified resident who passes a background check and completes a certified training course can obtain a five-year permit to carry a gun. Prior to 2011, local sheriff's departments had greater discretion about who received carry permits, which were issued on an annual basis.

With the boom in gun carry permits comes an increased need for facilities where owners can practice their marksmanship and receive training from educated teachers, gun enthusiasts say.

"It's just a completely underserved market," Tom Hudson, the managing partner at CrossRoads Shooting Sports, told The Des Moines Register (http://dmreg.co/1wpM5jB).

The Johnston facility, 5550 Johnston Drive, will include three range bays with 17 shooting lanes of up to 25 yards, a training facility and classrooms, and a retail space that will sell guns and accessories.

Central Iowa has several outdoor ranges, and law enforcement and private groups have indoor facilities. But the closest public indoor facilities similar to CrossRoads Shooting Sports are located in Omaha and Hiawatha. Both ranges are more than an hour's drive for Des Moines-area gun owners.

Cyd Koehn of Johnston is one of the 1,300 people who have liked CrossRoads' Facebook page. "I'm 46-years-old, female, and I believe in the right to carry," she said.

Her catering business provides food for "bullet brunches," social shooting events for women held at outdoor ranges. She looks forward to the new climate-controlled facility opening later this month.

Interest in indoor shooting ranges has grown in the last year in central Iowa. A pair of local developers had planned to open a similar indoor facility in Pleasant Hill in 2014 before financing for the project fell apart.

In October the Clive board of adjustment approved a permit for an indoor shooting range and retail center at 10500 Hickman Road. Fritz Nordengren and his partners plan to open Rangemasters Training Center there by the end of the year.

Iowa's "shall issue" permit system went into effect Jan. 1, 2011.

"When that (law) changed, that fundamentally changed the aspect of handgun ownership in Iowa," Hudson said.

In Polk County, a nearly three-fold increase in the number of carry permits issued occurred the year the new system began - 3,770 were issued in 2010, compared with 10,595 in 2011. The number of permits issued each year has dropped off since that first year, but with permits now being issued for five years, rather than annually, the overall number of people with carry permits has ballooned 700 percent in the last four years.

Ross Loder, bureau chief of the weapons permit section at the Iowa Department of Public Safety, said tracking the exact number of Iowans with permits can be difficult. Data include a marginal number of people who may have received permits in two counties after moving, and also those whose privileges were revoked after criminal convictions.

"It probably washes out," he said.

There are approximately 16,000 to 18,000 indoor firing ranges in the country, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducts research and makes recommendations to prevent worker injury and illness.

Hudson and Nordengren, the developer of the Clive range, both said it's peculiar that Des Moines has not had a large-scale indoor firearms center before.

"We saw a need for a safe, supervised and friendly shooting environment that is out of the weather," Nordengren said.

Hudson researched several markets with gun ranges. He said many are located in areas similar to his business - areas zoned for heavy-commercial and industrial uses.

No single governmental entity is tasked with range oversight, officials said, but operators must abide by various health and safety regulations and firearms laws. The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives oversees a registry of firearms dealers, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has regulations related to lead use.

Hudson said concerns about businesses like his are probably due to a lack of experience. "There's a lot of unknowns about what we were going to do."

Gun range projects in Clive, Johnston and Pleasant Hill have received broad support from city officials in those towns. Clive City Manager Dennis Henderson said given the increase in weapons permits "having places to practice should help increase the safety."

Hudson said he involved Johnston officials, including the police chief, early in process.

"I want to remove the doubt that we're not going to be a good neighbor and bring economic development to the community," Hudson said.

Tom Hudson envisions hundreds of customers coming each week to CrossRoads Shooting Sports, 5550 Johnston Drive, Johnston.

One focus is to provide women gun owners a space to train and learn. "The female segment is an absolute just swelling market demographic," said Hudson, the facility's managing partner and general manager.

According to a 2013 report from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, those who say they personally own a gun, rifle or pistol are overwhelmingly white, 82 percent, and male, 74 percent. Twenty-six percent of women said they owned a gun.

But some polls show the number of women gun owners is on the rise. Hudson cites industry group data that shows those interested in target shooting are increasingly younger, female and likely to reside in urban and suburban settings.

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Information from: The Des Moines Register, http://www.desmoinesregister.com