Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Rankin Inlet (Aug 13/01) - It took a lot of work during the past couple of years, but Nunavut has its first firing range.

The Rankin Inlet Gun Club received the final stamp of approval for the range this summer from the Canadian Firearms Centre.

Range safety adviser Mike Mussolum says the bottom line for the centre in granting a licence is that all projectiles must come to rest safely, either on the range, or on adjacent property that range owners control.

"A gun club could have a range, but, for any number of different reasons, fired projectiles may not come to rest on range property," says Mussolum.

"But if they have adjacent property to the range proper where they come to rest, that's acceptable."

The centre also looks at warning devices such as signs and flags, so people passing by are aware they are in the immediate vicinity of a shooting range.

Mussolum says another safety area he looks at is soil composition and obstacles on the range.

The safety officer looks for big boulders or any hard surface or other obstacle which may cause a bullet to ricochet outside the perimeters of the range.

Located less than a 10-minute drive away from the town, the Rankin Inlet Gun Club had to do a lot of sandbagging to defeat the ricochet problem.

With the amount of natural materials being more than a little scarce in the Kivalliq, construction on the firing range perimeters and back "wall" was more costly than in Southern locations.

"Construction on the Rankin range certainly was a lot more labour-intensive than down south, where they can pour concrete, use trees or steel, push dirt, those sorts of things.

"The group in Rankin was very safety-conscious right from the get go and did a great job."

"Our concern is purely that the range is designed in such a way that the types of activities to be conducted there can be done so safely and Rankin fits that bill."