I know the range. The owner is, hard to believe to look at him, 80 years old. He is a good man but his gun philosophy is very 70s/80s. Obviously, I don’t agree with him at all on this. I think you should be able to buy SAWs through the mail. He runs a very clean gun range, and it serves very diverse customer base. A significant number of people who come into his range are complete newbies so he stopped letting people shoot semi-auto rifles because they were shooting up the carriers and the ceiling. He will let you zero full power rifles. He will let you shoot 9mm ARS and other pCC type weapons. If he knows you and trusts you aren’t an idiot you can shoot any type of weapons on his range sort of 50 cal. He isn’t against assault weapons, or anything of the sort. In fact, he is actually very relaxed once he knows you aren’t a fool. I once shot a full auto hk51 on that range if that tells you anything. He is wrong on this, but generally he is a good dude.
I can agree to a “show me you’re not a putz then we’ll let you have more responsibility” philosophy–were I running a range I’d probably make newbs sit through a safety brief then prove themselves with a .22, then grant Centerfire access once you’ve shown you’re not reckless. Waivable at discretion based on prior experience… for example a Camp Perry competitor first-timing on my range would still go through Safety & Orientation but probably get waivered straight to the big leagues.
And it’s your business and you can run it any way you want to and that’s a good thing.
I would feel very comfortable shooting there.
I belong to a private range locally and you can show up on a weekday after 09:00 and have the run of the place. In the last ten years I have had only one bad experience and it was with a guy that didn’t even know he was being a “D”.