Wave 2: Electric Boogaloo
/Yes, folks, 2020 is the year that just keeps on giving, whether we want it or not.
The Bad News
Our beloved government has come up with an ingenious way to try to contain the rampant spread of our old pal COVID-19: colours on a map.
Ontario Government’s Framework
Currently, the Shooting Academy Listowel facility is in an “Orange/Restrict” zone (Huron-Perth). There are scattered local outbreaks around here, but we are still able to operate as a business open to the public with some precautions in place. If we get moved to “Red/Control,” it will negatively impact our business and our club. If things go all the way south and we somehow wind up as “Grey/Lockdown,” we will have to shut down again. And we seriously do not want that. It sucks for everybody.
As a business and a club, we have a responsibility to our members, our staff and our local community to follow and enforce rules. As firearms owners and enthusiasts, we recognize that we must even work with rules that we find objectionable and even illogical - it comes with the territory. To that end, we have made a difficult decision to place restrictions on our members from “Red/Control” and “Grey/Lockdown” zones. As of November 27, 2020, those zones include:
Durham Region
Hamilton Region
Halton Region
Region of Waterloo
York Region
Peel Region (Mississauga)
Toronto Region
At this time, we have to respectfully ask that members (or members’ guests) living in these regions, or those who have visited these regions recently, please do not come here until the public health crisis in your region clears up. We really hate having to place this restriction on our members, but we have to be responsible.
If you are from surrounding “Orange/Restrict” or “Yellow/Contain” zones, you can still come out and shoot with us. Please be responsible: wear a mask while inside the building, practice social distancing with other members and guests, and wash your hands before and after touching stuff. “Green/Protect” zone residents are welcome, but it’s a heck of a long drive.
We have also made the decision to suspend shooting packages and rentals until we have a clear resolution to the COVID pandemic. While we believe that this activity poses very little risk to anyone involved when proper precautions are taken, we fear that it will be willfully misrepresented as encouraging our members and guests to go against public health guidelines, promote crowded social gatherings, and so forth. The optics are bad, and we’re trying our hardest to stay open.
The Good News
The pro-shop is doing well.
Store sales are exceeding our expectations, and everyone has been super-cool so far. We’re finding a few quirks as we go forward - stuff that we thought would fly off the shelves is not moving so quickly as we predicted, for example, and items we tentatively brought in as a retail experiment ends up being a best-seller. We’re also looking at some short- to medium-term supply shortages on a few key items (most 9mm, CCI Standard .22LR), but we have a decent on-hand supply for the time being, and we’re planning ahead for next year.
Even with the speed bumps, learning curve errors and growing pains, we like the direction our sales have been heading. We have managed to fill our handgun display with a really good variety of products, from affordable surplus to bigger-ticket competition guns. We just got a shipment we are quite excited about - the Caniks we have been waiting for since spring finally showed up, and they are sweet.
The TP9SFX and TP9SF Elite Combat are our range guns. Members can buy a box of 9mm ammo and try them out on our range. Non-members can do the same with the purchase of a guest pass and valid ID. Call us for details.
Course Schedule
We are currently running CFSC courses. We are booked until the end of 2020, but we have several courses scheduled for early 2021 that we are currently booking. Dates are on the calendar. Seating is limited (we had a very lengthy waiting list we had to go through before we opened up availability to the general public) and we will indicate on the calendar when the courses are full. If you are anxious to get the course done, let us know - we often get last-minute drop outs and we scramble to fill an empty spot with only a day or two’s notice. If you can work with that, send us an email and we may give you a call on a Friday afternoon letting you know there is space available that night.
Obviously, if the situation changes with Wave 2 and we have to cancel courses, everyone involved will be notified and rescheduled as soon as possible. We’re hoping that won’t happen, but we’ve learned some uncomfortable lessons from the spring shutdown, so we have a few plans in place.
We have also started hammering out a plan to bring Hunter’s Education courses to the Shooting Academy. We’ve been outsourcing that particular training to others for a while, but we’re ready to bring it here now due to popular demand. We will be making further announcements about pricing and scheduling once we finalize the details sometime in the New Year.
If you have any concerns or questions about any of these issues, please feel free to contact us by email or phone.