WaA509 Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 I just completed my business application and have permission from the city to use my home address as my location. I am completing my 02 and 07 applications tomorrow along with opening a business account at my credit unit. I want to begin a firearm rental business and have permission to use our local range for this purpose. The plan is to capitalize on the tourism of this area and offer historical weapons for rent including NFA, semi-auto and bolt action. Aside from the legal stuff (policies, waivers, etc) and liability insurances (already looking at a policy of $500,000 in coverage), is there anything else I should do or be thinking about? My ultimate goal is to use this as a stepping stone to eventually transition from rental and local transfers only to manufacturing. hoping to pick the brains of the wealth if knowledge here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnsonlmg41 Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 No need for an 02/07. You just buy the guns and rent them. If you make the guns you are double liable as the mfr and the rental agency upping your insurance rates. Are you good with blood and trauma? Almost every range that rents has suicide tourism. It's never in anyone's business model. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPFiveO Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 28 minutes ago, johnsonlmg41 said: No need for an 02/07. You just buy the guns and rent them. If you make the guns you are double liable as the mfr and the rental agency upping your insurance rates. Are you good with blood and trauma? Almost every range that rents has suicide tourism. It's never in anyone's business model. You'd still need an 07/02 for purposes of being in possession of post 1986 machine guns. Good luck getting demo letters on obscure stuff. You might want to do your shopping for no law letter guns. There's no way I'd rent fully transferable or pre 86 keepers because that would turn them into a depreciating asset. johnsonlmg41 has a very valid concern about the liability of manufacturing your own NFA conversions in house. We've all seen and heard stories about people being injured or killed with NFA firearms, seldom if ever the fault of the firearm, but it doesn't change the outcome. That liability wouldn't just apply to the manufacturing of the firearm but also it's maintenance. Battlefield Vegas keeps very accurate logs of how many rounds go through their firearms as well as cleaning schedules and parts replacement. I'm sure they aren't the only ones, but any range that rents firearms should follow that lead because documentation of due diligence will save you in court. As far as the insurance goes, most small ammunition manufacturers I've talked to carry a minimum of a one million dollar policy. If you stick with a half million I hope you have deep pockets to make up the difference. I don't even know how much liability coverage a firearms manufacturer would need. Reading your last sentence makes me wonder why you'd use this path as a stepping stone to get into the manufacturing business. The rental and sales part are completely different than manufacturing. I have friends that do one or the other but not both. If you want to get into manufacturing it's almost this simple. Apply for the proper licenses, buy a CNC machine, buy forgings, put the forgings in your CNC machine and press the cycle start button and make money. I won't get into the mountain of details that ensue with this simple plan. I have a buddy that does manufacturing and it's a constant headache. If a machine goes down it's not making money. He recently had a batch of bad forgings. It wasn't evident until the machining process had been completed. Then a stress crack from the forging process became clearly evident only after machining. And that was after running several hundred of them! Back to the range portion. You should have at least one trained medic at every range session, even if it's you. If nothing else take a first aid trauma class that teaches you how to deal with gunshot wounds. I've been an an instructor/assistant at hundreds of classes throughout my career and we always have tourniquets and a first aid bag on site. Another consideration is the instructor. I've taught hundreds of classes on a variety of firearms and never once have I taught a class on a firearm I wasn't familiar with. You, or whoever is teaching had better have intimate knowledge of every firearm introduced into the curriculum. The instructor needs to be extremely observant at all times and be prepared to take control of the firearm if there's a problem. I could probably write an entire book on several related subjects and I still couldn't cover it all nor could I claim to know it all. I've been in this game for over 35 of my 55 years on this spinning blue ball and I'm still trying to learn things. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
United Surplus Arms Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 Also if the range is not at the same location as your home (and license) then you would have to be present at all times that any NFA items are available 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SGT Fish Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 4 hours ago, MPFiveO said: You'd still need an 07/02 for purposes of being in possession of post 1986 machine guns. Good luck getting demo letters on obscure stuff. You might want to do your shopping for no law letter guns. There's no way I'd rent fully transferable or pre 86 keepers because that would turn them into a depreciating asset. johnsonlmg41 has a very valid concern about the liability of manufacturing your own NFA conversions in house. We've all seen and heard stories about people being injured or killed with NFA firearms, seldom if ever the fault of the firearm, but it doesn't change the outcome. That liability wouldn't just apply to the manufacturing of the firearm but also it's maintenance. Battlefield Vegas keeps very accurate logs of how many rounds go through their firearms as well as cleaning schedules and parts replacement. I'm sure they aren't the only ones, but any range that rents firearms should follow that lead because documentation of due diligence will save you in court. As far as the insurance goes, most small ammunition manufacturers I've talked to carry a minimum of a one million dollar policy. If you stick with a half million I hope you have deep pockets to make up the difference. I don't even know how much liability coverage a firearms manufacturer would need. Reading your last sentence makes me wonder why you'd use this path as a stepping stone to get into the manufacturing business. The rental and sales part are completely different than manufacturing. I have friends that do one or the other but not both. If you want to get into manufacturing it's almost this simple. Apply for the proper licenses, buy a CNC machine, buy forgings, put the forgings in your CNC machine and press the cycle start button and make money. I won't get into the mountain of details that ensue with this simple plan. I have a buddy that does manufacturing and it's a constant headache. If a machine goes down it's not making money. He recently had a batch of bad forgings. It wasn't evident until the machining process had been completed. Then a stress crack from the forging process became clearly evident only after machining. And that was after running several hundred of them! Back to the range portion. You should have at least one trained medic at every range session, even if it's you. If nothing else take a first aid trauma class that teaches you how to deal with gunshot wounds. I've been an an instructor/assistant at hundreds of classes throughout my career and we always have tourniquets and a first aid bag on site. Another consideration is the instructor. I've taught hundreds of classes on a variety of firearms and never once have I taught a class on a firearm I wasn't familiar with. You, or whoever is teaching had better have intimate knowledge of every firearm introduced into the curriculum. The instructor needs to be extremely observant at all times and be prepared to take control of the firearm if there's a problem. I could probably write an entire book on several related subjects and I still couldn't cover it all nor could I claim to know it all. I've been in this game for over 35 of my 55 years on this spinning blue ball and I'm still trying to learn things. Quite a few people get injured due to failures of firearms. Safety is key. Even subguns can blow out cases and take out an eye. Quite a few people have been shot in the hand because someone mounts a vertical forward grip on a plastic rail of a glock or scorpion Evo and it snaps mid magazine, while the shooter is pushing forward. Deaths are usually due to bad setups or the client not being instructed properly. I see rentals more like "a 5-minute class on how to use this gun safely." If you're just handing a MG to a random client, you're asking for trouble. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPFiveO Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 1 hour ago, SGT Fish said: If you're just handing a MG to a random client, you're asking for trouble. Ok, true story time. I was called to a local indoor range to install their newly acquired registered post sample Glock switch. After installation we proceeded to the range to test fire the pistol. I dumped a full 17 round magazine with no problem. I handed it to the owner, a friend of mine who is very familiar with machine guns, and he did the same thing. Then he handed it to his brother... Apparently his brother was lulled into a false sense of security after watching two guys keep the 1800 rpm buzz box level and downrange. About six rounds into the magazine he was shooting the ceiling baffles and clipped the wire that ran the targets downrange and back. So, it's not as easy as the Hollywood movies make it look. I once visited an indoor range in Tennessee. I was actually scared to be in the building. There were dozens and dozens of holes in the ceiling baffles and the walls going downrange. I asked the guy at the desk how many people had died and he said that they actually had a customer rent a gun and proceed to shoot himself in the head once on the range. That was not the answer I was expecting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D Edwards Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 sounds like a bad idea to me and probably a money loser. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Got Uzi Posted June 6 Report Share Posted June 6 I used to help with a womens shooting clinic and we would bring out subguns for the ladies to shoot and I can tell you this-you literally have to be on top of them every second as things can go sideways VERY quickly. I have taken friends out to shoot full auto's and there were guns that were left in the safe for literally safety reasons. These days everyone thinks they are John Wick when they are more like Barney Fife and lucky to safely handle a 22 revolver let alone a Glock 18. In the right controlled environment, what you seek is possible, but handing someone a firearm and saying here you go without qualified range people is a no go. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WaA509 Posted June 7 Author Report Share Posted June 7 I am not going to just be handing anyone a firearm without first going through a safety procedure and demonstrating they understand safe handling skills. Myself or another team member will also be with the customer from start to finish and first aid will be mandatory to work with me. This isn’t my first rodeo. I have worked at NFA rental ranges off and on for the last 10 years as an RSO or associate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jbntex Posted June 7 Report Share Posted June 7 (edited) Unless you are personally "judgement-proof" and have nothing for a plaintiff to take, $500K in liability insurance seems really really low to me for the risk that renting firearms much less machineguns to the general public entails. As a commercial enterprise renting to strangers who may have no firearm experience, much less machinegun experience, I would think I would want to add another zero to that liability insurance number and have at least $5M in liability coverage in the event of an accidental/wrongful death of a customer. That goes double if you are planning to take on both the base rental liability (something goes wrong due to no mechanical fault of the firearm) as well as the manufacturing liability (if the gun itself is at fault for the accident). For reference I am not in the machinegun rental business but let personal friends shoot my machineguns with my supervision. These are folks who are experienced shooters, understand the risks, whom I have known for years and whom I wouldn't think would turn around and sue me if something went wrong. I still carry a $3M umbrella liability policy as a CYA and have recently given serious thought to updating the amount. Edited June 7 by jbntex 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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