Recent legislative changes make IT easier for states to use wildlife restoration funds to construct or expand shooting ranges

This Project Grant award of $178,726.97 was provided by the U.S. Department of the Interior Fish and Wildlife Service under the Multistate Conservation Grant Program (CFDA 15.628) to the United States Sportsmens Alliance Foundation, also known as the Sportsmen's Alliance Foundation. The funding will support a project to help states increase public support for building and expanding shooting ranges by generating and communicating information on the economic impacts, including jobs, tax receipts, and conservation revenues, generated from range visitation. Key deliverables include a virtual calculator that allows range operators to quantify and report the economic impacts of their operations, as well as a survey of the general public to better understand perceptions and reasons for opposing or accepting new shooting ranges. This work will be executed by Southwick Associates under a sub-award. The project aims to address barriers that states and private range operators face in gaining public support for new or expanded shooting ranges, which can limit participation in target shooting activities.

In addition, several multistate conservation grants are showing how to identify where new ranges are needed (national shooting sports foundation), how to attract non-traditional audiences to ranges (outdoor stewards of conservation foundation) and the types of shooting activities that will maximize use of shooting ranges (sportsmens alliance foundation association for conservation information). These projects will help expand range capacity and boost participation, but states and private range operators still face hurdles in gaining public support to build new ranges and expand existing locations. Much of this relates to the publics current understanding of the negatives associated with ranges, such as noise, but little is known or communicated about positives, such as jobs, retail sales, generation of conservation excise tax revenues, provision of safe places to shoot, education for new firearm owners, and more. Limited public awareness of these benefits can contribute to lower public support for state agencies and their missions plus suppress efforts to boost participation through states provision of new or expanded range opportunities. This project will help states increase public support for building and or expanding shooting ranges by generating and communicating information regarding the jobs, tax receipts, conservation revenues, and other economic impacts generated from a typical range visit. The results will also include a virtual calculator that allows range operators to easily quantify and report the total economic impacts their operations generate for their local communities based on their expected or actual range use levels. This work will be accomplished under contract to southwick associates leveraging data from the multistate conservation grant-funded target shooting economics project currently underway by the sportsmens alliance foundation (SAF) and expected by july 2024 which significantly reduces the cost of this proposed project. This effort will also include a survey of the U.S. General public to gain a better understanding of the common reasons why people often oppose shooting ranges and reasons why non-shooters would accept new ranges. The results will help guide state and industry public communications efforts when proposing new sites. Survey content will be developed with input from state and private range operators recruited from SAF and its industry partners, then fielded using standard online sampling and analytical techniques by southwick associates. Results will be shared in a graphics-based format sharing recommended approaches and messaging for boosting public support and helping range managers better understand how to address public concerns. The virtual calculator allowing ranges to develop custom economic impact estimates will be posted to the SAF website, shared with other shooting organizations for posting, and promoted via direct contact with all state range managers and industry sources. This project will be led by the sportsmens alliance foundation which has significant experience delivering economic projects to state agencies and working with states and industry on issues such as ranges and conservation. Without the information to be provided by this project, states and other range operators will continue to experience higher levels of opposition for new ranges than otherwise necessary, thereby minimizing capacity to recruit and retain target shooters.