Encouraging...

Brad_in_MA sends in an encouraging story for all of us on the side of freedom...

Guns are the new golf: Taking clients to the range

When Natalie Snyder wants to win over a business client, she hits the range, but probably not the kind you think.

Snyder, a vice president at the real estate brokerage firm Transwestern, spent time as a member of the National Skeet Shooting Associations’ Junior All-American team as a teenager. Gun clubs, she said, create a great environment for networking and developing new business.

There's a discussion on the "upscale" gun clubs being built in Texas, as well as how going to the range is a new way of breaking the ice with clients. I find it interesting that this is not an NRA publication but a business journal - it's hard to deny this is a real, tangible thing. It is an intriguing concept; I'm a little concerned that it's just a fad like cigar bars were in the 1990s, however. While it seemed for a while that you couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a trendy cigar bar, it didn't take long for the fad to pass and the support dry up and blow away.

With that said, however, it is very encouraging that more than a few people see the recent upswing in firearms ownership and awareness as something worth investing money into. I think the idea of an "upscale" gun club is a fantastic idea - one of the ways to attract new shooters is to *not* have their first introduction be a dingy, dusty, poorly ventilated, unheated cinderblock range or spartan outdoor field. We do with what we have available, of course; if I had the option of a comfortable, heated/cooled indoor range with excellent ventilation and better sound deadening I'd much rather bring a new shooter there than an outdoor gun range in Texas in August or New England in January...

Anything that brings new folks into the fold is a good thing, IMHO...

That is all.