Saturday, November 11, 2006

Attention all Riflemen

Here’s the deal. My youngest spends the summer with his grandparents in New Brunswick. Since he was officially 12 years old last summer his grandfather was finally able to take Isaiah periodically to his gun club. Isaiah showed remarkable promise and it appears like he will be maintaining the family tradition of being a natural marksman.

Next summer his grandfather (and Isaiah) would like to be able to enter him in a number of the competitive shoots being held, but Isaiah needs to complete a “Fire Arms Safety” course” and get a certificate. I tried to Google the information I need and got completely lost in government/bureaucratic legalese.

Now I am under pressure on two fronts here. One I could probably ignore until next June but the other lives with me. So anyone know of a gun club in Toronto that offers a “Fire Arms Safety” course that would satisfy the province of New Brunswick’s “Fire Arms Safety” certificate requirements and/or where can I go to get the manual and make arrangements for him to write the test in Toronto?

1 comment:

Chris Taylor said...

Toronto has very limited public range facilities for anything greater than .22cal. Most of the local clubs shoot only .22s, and occasionally revolvers / pistols. If you are doing Olympic-style comp shooting then 22s and pistols will be just fine. To get into the larger bores requires access to police or military ranges, or going way outside the city.

Closest to you is probably UofT's Hart House, which has both a rifle club and a revolver club, but you have to be a member of Hart House to join. Their range used to be tiny and dark but I think it's been renovated since the last time I was there.

I used to shoot at the Scarborough Rifle Club (a short walk from Kennedy subway station). They do smallbore (.22) and air rifle comp shooting and boast some members that have competed at the Olympic level. I did my training with a now-nonexistent club (Toronto Dominion Rifle Club) so I can't tell you what Scarborough's instruction is like. But the range facilities are better than what I was previously used to (small, cramped range in the basement of a fire hall).

Both Scarborough and Hart House let you use club gear so there's no need to go whole hog and get a Firearms License (unless you want to).

You can also check this national listing of gun clubs for Toronto locations and see if one of them can help you out.