Colorado: Support Needed to Re-Open Rampart Shooting Range!

Following an accidental shooting last July, the Forest Service closed the very popular and heavily used Rampart Shooting Range on the Pike National Forest.  In its nearly 20 year history, Rampart had never before experienced a shooting-related injury or fatality.   Rampart is the only free public range in El Paso County and receives 40,000 visitors a year.  The Service called the closure a "time-out" in order to assess whether the design of the range was a factor.  An investigation determined that the range was not a factor in the accident.  Safety experts have said that the accident could have happened at any range.  But after it closed Rampart, the Forest Service devised a scheme to keep the range closed permanently. 

The Forest Service has listed requirements that must be met before it will reopen Rampart.  There is no timetable for meeting these requirements and likely no money to cover costs.  The most significant issue is the requirement of requiring full time supervision.  Most ranges on federal lands operate without supervision and this requirement could place all such ranges in jeopardy.  Rampart Range is in need of improvements which were identified more than two years ago.  Such improvements can be addressed and implemented with the range reopened.  The Forest Service has said that it could take up to five years before Rampart is reopened, but there is no guarantee that it would reopen Rampart in that timeframe or at any time in the future.

NRA has been working to get Rampart Range reopened since the day it was closed, but we need the help of Colorado hunters and shooters to show the Forest Service and your elected officials that the federal government cannot continue to close public lands to recreational shooting, and certainly not without replacing those areas lost with other areas of the same or great value.  Rampart Shooting Range is an important resource for the shooting community along the Front Range.  There is no incentive for the Forest Service to reopen Rampart unless the shooting sports community demands it!

Please send a letter of support for the immediate reopening of Rampart to: Tom Tidwell, Chief of the Forest Service, at [email protected], and copy your letter to Senator Mark Udall at [email protected], Senator Michael Bennet at http://bennet.senate.gov/contact/, Congressman Doug Lamborn at [email protected], and Governor Bill Ritter by clicking here.  Please stress that keeping the range closed is not supportable by the investigative report; that the closure has robbed the shooting community of a valuable resource; and that needed improvements to the range can be planned and implemented without closure.