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Cannibul

Cannibul

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Post Oak Bend, Texas
Last night I attended a board meeting of the Terrell Rifle and Pistol Club and was accepted as a member. Orientation is tomorrow!

When I moved here in 2014 they were not accepting new members. Hadn't accepted one in over 10 years.

In 2016 they started accepting new member applications. I called my buddy who's a member and he agreed to sponsor me.

My number finally came up and I'm in. It's pretty much a perfect place, my only real gripe I have is their longest rifle range is 200 yards...but with my restricted mobility that's really not much of a gripe.

The club is about 25-30 minutes from my house. That's plenty close for me. My indoor range in Portland was the same amount of time.

I'm pretty excited about this!
 
Before Obama our club was always looking for new members, another large local club, was sending blind mailings to the local NRA/TSRA membership list looking for new members (they have 1000 yard, range ours is only 300 max, wish I'd joined it too back then, it wasn't like the fees weren't affordable). Except on weekends I pretty much had the place to myself. My how times have changed.

All considered, I think its positive that there is a large growth in shooting! Congrats on finding a good club to shoot at!

Our membership had been closed for several years now, but finally took in some new ones by lottery last renewal cycle. The BOD is doing a great job to keep it usable for all the members and improving the facility to allow more users. Its hard to avoid the temptation to take in the cash from all comers and end up making the place useless for all.
 
I wish these clubs would find a way to accept anyone who wants to join and has a decent
background. Shooters should all have a place to shoot. Most clubs now days have way
more members than ever show up. I belong to a club in Pa. that has 800 members and
when you go by there is hardly anyone shooting. Most of the time no one.
Zeke
 
Glad you've gotten in and will have a place to shoot! Don't fret about "just 200 yards" ! You'll find a way to make it tough...and more fun!

Mark
 
That's great news!

I hope I get the same news; the club I want to join caps membership at 700. I'm #79 on the waiting list, maybe next year.
 
Congrats on getting in.
I like the idea of members having to attend an orientation. At least you know that the other members have safety and rules explained. I wish every range had that sort of thing. The other range I used to go to had nobody watching what was going on and there were times people were destructive and dangerous. Not to mention very rude and immature.
 
Congrats OP! I am also working on a membership to my local club.

Also, as a side note, many clubs have a lot of old farts that don't want new members. They think the new "kids" shooting their concealed carry weapons at 15' and double tapping their ARs is ridiculous. They close the membership so that they don't have to deal with that stuff. What they don't realize though, is that the young shooters with their black rifles are the future of this, and they are the ones who will fight to keep the 2A when the old guys are too old to fight anymore. Without all the new shooters our cause would be dead. Thankfully the club I am joining is a good mix of old and new.
 
Baron66

Also, as a side note, many clubs have a lot of old farts that don't want new members. They think the new "kids" shooting their concealed carry weapons at 15' and double tapping their ARs is ridiculous. They close the membership so that they don't have to deal with that stuff. What they don't realize though, is that the young shooters with their black rifles are the future of this, and they are the ones who will fight to keep the 2A when the old guys are too old to fight anymore.
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I use to run into this mindset years ago when looking for a gun club to join. The "senior" members wanted their own private club and didn't want any "new blood" coming in and trying to change things. And even on the off chance you did finally get in you were made to do all the grunt work around the range whenever you were there with little if any time left to do any shooting. Most of these clubs eventually went the way of the dinosaur but at least over the last few years a couple of open public ranges started up and are not all that far from where I live.
 
TRPC has membership capped at 500. There was some discussion at the meeting about raising the cap.

I've only been once and it was fairly busy on that weekend. I'm not sure what it's like during the week. I'll find out soon.
 
Congratulations! I live in a small enough area that clubs like that do not exist within feasible driving distance. Instead, I am in the BearBrimstone gun club. It has one member and the range is the fields around my house.
 
Outstanding!

Re: being limited to 200 yards, as I've aged, I've been pretty happy too stick to 100 yards for most of my range time- it's a shorter walk to the target and back !
 
Congratulations on your membership, fortunately, or unfortunately which ever the case may be, I live within 2 miles of my desert range, which exists of a berm at 100 yards and open desert as far as you can shoot. The unfortunate thing is it tends to be a dumping ground for whatever the "deplorables" don't want such as a refridgerator, a micro-wave, and even an old campershell not to mention everything else. Fortunately my pick-up and some others will eventually take that junk to the county dump which is all of 4 miles away. The next closest range is 30 minutes away, however the range fees make it rather hard to justify, and I question the safety over all of said facility..Hope you enjoy your new range experience.
 
I wish these clubs would find a way to accept anyone who wants to join and has a decent
background.
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Could be wrong, but I thought that the cap had to do with insurance coverage--going above the 500 number was going to change the coverage cost significantly.

I'm a shooter too and range rules and restrictions often cause me a lot of irritation. And it is true that they are not always the result of logical thinking or outside restrictions. But many are imposed because of something stupid someone has actually done or by outside entities which the range is dependent on to operate.
Also, as a side note, many clubs have a lot of old farts that don't want new members. They think the new "kids" shooting their concealed carry weapons at 15' and double tapping their ARs is ridiculous. They close the membership so that they don't have to deal with that stuff. What they don't realize though, is that the young shooters with their black rifles are the future of this, and they are the ones who will fight to keep the 2A when the old guys are too old to fight anymore.
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I'm sure that there's some of that in TRPC, but I think the biggest issue is making sure that people don't act unsafely, tear up the range or anger the neighbors. As has happened in the past on many occasions.

TRPC is an unattended range which means that there's no one on duty to insure that the members act like responsible adults so they do their best to only accept people who are responsible adults. It's not foolproof, but they've been operating for several decades now which suggests that they're on the right track.
Last night I attended a board meeting of the Terrell Rifle and Pistol Club and was accepted as a member.
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Congratulations! Maybe I'll run into you on the range sometime.
I've only been once and it was fairly busy on that weekend. I'm not sure what it's like during the week.
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The weekends are busy, partly because there is usually some kind of match or activity going on. It's a lot quieter during the week, but even when I go during the week I see a few members. It's not usually a problem as the ranges have berms separating them to allow persons to be downrange on one range while another is in use.
 
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