Range owners/operators/employees: Rental Guns

[Rob1035]

Since I've been shooting, I've always wondered about the maintenance of range rental guns. Both of the indoor ranges I frequent have a decent selection of rentals, but each time I rent one, they are filthy, even for a non-clean gun freak like myself. Some have been dirty to the point of malfunctioning.

folks in the business, I curious, is this common, or are these ranges just being lazy or something? I would think the whole idea behind rental guns is to sell new guns, and having an operational rental would be more conducive to a sale. Maybe I should volunteer some cleaning time to get some free range time or something

Thoughts?

 

[mattk]

Went I worked at a range, we tried to clean the rentals once a week, but sometimes when things got really busy we would forget.

Some guns were so unreliable (Para LDA's) that we had to stop renting them.
Would they have functioned better if the were cleaned more frequently?
I dunno, but I do know that the rugar and browning .22s we rented NEVER got cleaned and they ran great.
The Glocks worked well. The Walther p99's did well also.
The Oly Arms .45 AR was a flaming load of dog doo even when clean.
The Desert Eagle .50 had a safety that always came loose.( We stopped renting it after 6 months, Maintence was a pain)
The Smith revovlers were great too.
The Rossi .38 special Lever Action rifle was accurate and reliable and a surprisingly popular rental.
The single action Para guns were better than the LDAs but had a tendency to rust and and the nickled plated parts flaked and pitted badly.
The short barreled LDA c6.45 was a miserable gun from the minute we unpacked. Both examples were so unreliable. One was returned to PO and the other became the Gunsmith's project.(I forget everything he did to it but it never ran well)

Whoo that got long.

 

[Darth Ruger]

I think it varies from one range to another. The one I currently go to has a guy behind the counter that takes the returned rentals and field strips them, gives them a check and quick cleaning before putting them back in the glass case. The guns I've rented there look okay and function fine.

But the range where I used to live is a different story. Every time I saw someone return a gun, all they would do is verify the chamber was empty, then put it right back in the case without giving it so much as a cursory inspection. Many of the stainless guns there were black with carbon deposits.

The funny part is that range doesn't allow rapid fire or double-taps.
Too dangerous.

 

[jashobeam]

Glock 19 too dirty to cycle

The indoor range I just starting going to has a good selection of rentals. Last Thursday my friend rented a Glock 19 that was so dirty (at least the employee told him that dirtiness was the problem) that the slide would lock open each time a round was fired. When my friend first told me that the Glock was malfunctioning, I was skeptical and figured that the problem was his error. I was wrong; the gun would only fire one round at a time.

 

[Boss Spearman]

Glocks are not as reliable as the myth says. I've had a couple of rental Glocks fail to eject, and the same with a Sig. But if they're supposed to be dragged through the sand, mud, put at the bottom of the ocean, etc and have tens of thousands of rounds fired through them without failing, how could a mere rental Glock fail?

 

[Fun2Shoot]

In my neck of the woods, the range nearest me has a good selection of rental handguns. A wide range of brands, calibers and price ranges too. I have rented everything from a Bersa Thunder .380 to a Kimber Desert Warrior 45acp there.

The guns always function well and I think that they use a Dunk-it type bath between rental uses and a field strip after a certain amout of rentals. They keep track of the rentals and clean accordingly. They sell most of the rentals after about 90 days of renting, they say.

It's a nice way to shoot a weapon that you may be interested in buying or just want to shoot a $1000+ gun that you can never afford.

 

[Shipwreck]

The rental guns here at an indoor range are only $5 to rent each. I rented a Beretta Storm carbine recently. Also rented a P99 2x, and this made me want to buy one. Rented a Glock 34, and bought one the next day.

They have expensive 1911s, Berettas, EVERY Glock model, the P99, a few revolvers, and some other stuff. Not really anything brand new, unfortunately. Wish they had some H&Ks.