Have You Heard of the NRA Range Technical Team?

The National Rifle Association Range Technical Team is a little-known program for ranges and gun clubs. It wants people to know they’re available to help and are looking for volunteers.

The NRA Range Technical Team is a program put on by the National Rifle Association for the benefit of advancing the Second Amendment. This program comes at no cost to those seeking help, except for on-site range evaluations that require an advisor. The team is responsible for helping facilities in everything having to do with running a range and/or gun club. The NRA’s Range Technical Team has been ramping up again since COVID, and besides getting out into the field more, they’re looking for volunteers too.

Andrew Pulvermacher is the national supervisor of the Range Technical Team. About 25 years ago Pulvermacher got pulled into getting further involved in the shooting sports. He said it started with volunteering at a Boy Scout camp. After that first time helping out at camp, Pulvermacher said that he got trained for everything as an instructor and continued to donate two weeks every summer to the scouts.

Those days at the camp led to Pulvermacher’s next phase in his journey. He and a friend designed a range for that facility. That work didn’t go unnoticed, and he got asked if he’d like to participate in the Range Technical Team program. “They trained the heck out of” him, he said, and he’s been doing cases ever since. A little over two years ago when Pulvermacher retired from his primary job, he was asked if he’d like to take over as the national supervisor, which he did — a role that’s also a volunteer position.

What’s the Range Technical Team and what do they do?

“It’s a nationwide network of trained volunteers who provide technical assistance to public, private, and law enforcement ranges with any type of support that they need,” Pulvermacher explained. “What we do most of is handle phone inquiries and email inquiries from ranges saying, ‘We have a question,’ ‘We have a problem.’”

One of the largest threats that ranges and facilities are up against today is “urban sprawl.” As towns and cities expand, the land surrounding many of these ranges and gun clubs gets scooped up. In his native Connecticut, Pulvermacher says that a range he’s affiliated with used to be in the middle of nowhere. But subdivisions and houses started popping up all around them, closing in on the site.

“So now we have this range with five-acre McMansions around us, and they’re complaining about sound and they’re complaining about this and that and the other thing,” Pulvermacher said. “This is happening all over the country, and that’s a large part of what we’re doing is helping ranges to maintain themselves. Our mission is to make sure that ranges can continue and can continue safely, so that we can exercise our Second Amendment rights.”

Some of the issues that the team helps land and facility owners with include: noise issues, alleged bullet strikes at adjoining properties, effective use of land, range development, environmental management, and design upgrades and engineered solutions. Some of the technical particulars the Range Technical Team will advise on are things like baffles, backstops, and ventilation.

All of these interactions are done usually over the phone and email. However, if necessary, the team will send out a volunteer to help evaluate a facility.

“We can send out a Range Technical Team advisor, which is a trained volunteer — and they get a lot of training. And we will do an on-site consultation,” Pulvermacher said. “The result being about a 30-page detailed report with observations (and) suggestions. We review infrastructure. We review administrative management protocols. We’ll go out to the range (and …) talk with range owners.”

Everything they offer is free of charge up until the point when an advisor gets sent to a facility. Once someone travels to a location, there are two different fee schedules; one for NRA members and one for nonmembers. “It’s $1,250 for the visit (for members), which includes travel, hotel, usually one full day on site, and the subsequent report, and that basically just covers our cost,” Pulvermacher explained. Non-NRA members are charged $2,000 for the same service.

For an engineering firm to come out, Pulvermacher said in jest, it’ll cost $5,000 to $10,000 to just “shake your hand.”

The Range Technical Team has been ramping up recently and has been undergoing a sort of renaissance. During COVID-era, much of the program was halted. During that time, the team lost many of their experienced volunteers. Essentially they were starting the program back up with only half their force of volunteers when it was pulled from mothballs.

“At one time pre-COVID we had 66 volunteers, and those volunteers, like myself, are range masters, chief range safety officers, instructors — they’re heavily involved in the community,” Pulvermacher explained. “A lot of them are competitive shooters, very interesting people, and most of us are people who have a little bit of extra time. It doesn’t take a huge amount of time, but we want to give back to the 2A community.”

For people who want to get involved and learn more to help them in their own lives, the NRA offers two end-user programs.

There’s training for the casual local volunteer who wants to help out at their gun club or local range. It’s an online training program that’s for anyone working at an operational level at a range or gun club. That class is the online Range Development Operations course and runs about six to eight hours long. The price to take that costs students $300.

For people who have a more managerial role at a facility, there’s the Range Development Operations Conference. This in-person training runs for two days and costs participants $525 to attend. Enrollment includes three meals and is a “deep dive into everything to do with starting, developing, building, expanding, and protecting a range.”

The Range Development Operations Conference is a great option for facility owners. In the case of private gun clubs, new club presidents and those responsible for the range grounds and operations would also benefit from the conference. (The next conference coming up is Sept. 24 and 25.)

And for those people out there who are interested in doing what Pulvermacher has been doing, there’s extensive training for advisor candidates available. Once trained and vetted, the NRA will send advisors out to one-to-two facilities a year. Right now they have about 33 volunteer advisors and they’re looking to get a few in each state. If this sounds like you, you can reach out to them at their dedicated website: RangeServices.NRA.org/Technical-Team/

The Range Technical Team has a lot of resources available and is a treasure trove of information as it’s been explained to me. From the paid-for on-site inspections, to the free telephone and electronic advice they offer, it’s coming from dedicated volunteers who don’t take a dime in the way of compensation to help out.

I asked Pulvermacher why he does it. Why does he volunteer his time? “We do it because we love what we do,” he said. “We love helping people. We love the Second Amendment. We love the United States … This is our way of giving back to the community.”