Liability Waiver & Release

The risks you are accepting

Shooting is dangerous. That is not a formality — people are seriously injured and killed at shooting ranges, including well-run ones. By signing this you are saying you understand that and you are choosing to accept those risks.

The risks include, but are not limited to:

1. Gunshot wounds, including from a negligent or accidental discharge — yours, another shooter's, or one caused by a firearm that malfunctions.
2. Ricochets, splash-back, and fragments. Bullets, jacket material, and target debris can come back toward the firing line off steel, rock, frozen ground, berms, and hard objects, at angles nobody predicted.
3. Burns and cuts from hot brass, hot barrels, muzzle blast, and ejected casings.
4. Permanent hearing loss and tinnitus, including from a single unexpected shot fired nearby before hearing protection is on.
5. Eye injury from fragments, debris, hot gases, and unburned powder.
6. Lead and other chemical exposure from primers, bullets, solvents, and airborne residue. Lead exposure builds up over time and is a particular hazard for children and for anyone who is pregnant or may become pregnant.
7. Injury caused by other people on the range — someone sweeping the line with a muzzle, handling a firearm behind the line, moving forward of the line at the wrong moment, or simply not knowing what they are doing.
8. Mechanical failure of a firearm, ammunition, magazine, holster, or the range's own equipment, including a case rupture or an out-of-battery discharge.
9. Ordinary hazards of the property — uneven ground, holes, slips and falls, weather, heat and cold, insects, snakes, and animals.

You are accepting these risks whether they arise from an accident, from equipment failing, from the condition of the property, or from another person's carelessness — including the carelessness of the Range, its staff, and its other members.

[Range: whether your state lets a release cover the range's own negligence, and how it must be worded to do so, is exactly the question to put to your attorney. Some states require language far more specific than the sentence above; some will not enforce it at all.]

You are responsible for your own protective equipment, and you agree to wear eye and ear protection whenever you are on or near the firing line.

Release and promise not to sue

Read this section carefully. You are giving up legal rights.

In exchange for being allowed to use the Range, you release [Range legal name] and its owners, officers, employees, volunteers, range officers, instructors, members, landlord, and insurers — together, "the Released Parties" — from any claim for injury, death, illness, or damage to your property arising out of your use of the Range or your presence on the property.

You also promise not to sue the Released Parties over anything this release covers, and you accept that if you do, this document may be produced as a defense to that claim.

This release binds you and anyone who could bring a claim through you — your spouse, your children, your heirs, your estate, and your personal representatives.

This release does not cover anything the law does not permit to be released, and it is not intended to release anyone for intentionally harming you or for conduct beyond ordinary negligence. If part of it cannot be enforced where you live, that part does not apply and the rest still does.

Indemnification

If someone else brings a claim against the Released Parties because of something you did or failed to do at the Range — a person you injured, a guest you brought, or a member of your own family — you agree to defend the Released Parties against that claim and to pay the resulting judgment, settlement, and reasonable legal costs.

This does not apply to a claim arising from the Released Parties' own intentional wrongdoing.

Medical treatment

If you are hurt at the Range and cannot speak for yourself, you authorize the Range's staff to call emergency services and to permit emergency medical treatment and transport for you.

You agree that you, or your health insurer, are responsible for the cost of that treatment and transport — not the Range.

You confirm that you are physically and mentally able to handle a firearm safely, that you are not impaired by alcohol, drugs, or medication, and that you have told the Range about anything staff would need to know in an emergency. [Range: if you keep an emergency contact or a medical-notes field on the member record, say so here and tell members to keep it current.]

Governing law and severability

[Range: with your attorney, name here the law that governs this document and where any dispute over it will be heard. HotRange has deliberately left this blank rather than guess — the answer depends on where your range is, and a wrong answer here can undo the rest of the document.]

If a court decides that any part of this document cannot be enforced, the rest of it still applies, and the part that cannot be enforced should be read as narrowly as it needs to be in order to stand.

Your acknowledgement

By signing, you are saying that:

1. You have read this entire document, or had it read to you, and you understand it.
2. Nobody rushed you, you were able to ask questions, and you could have had an attorney look at it first.
3. You are 18 or older and you are signing for yourself.
4. You may lawfully possess a firearm and ammunition.
5. You understand this is a release of legal rights, that it binds your family and your estate as well as you, and that you are giving up the right to sue over the things it covers.
6. You are signing it freely, and not because anyone pressured you to.

If you do not agree to all of this, do not sign it and do not use the Range.