Protecting Marksmen: Rubber special flooring norament^® 945 grano provides safety in a cinema shooting range

Rubber special flooring norament^® 945 grano provides safety in a cinema shooting range

Hunting is popular: In Germany, almost 390,000 citizens possess a hunting licence1. Hunters train in cinema shooting ranges to improve their marksmanship in conditions that are as realistic as possible. After all: An experienced hunter will spare their quarry from any unnecessary suffering. These indoor firing ranges are equipped with screens at one end that shown films recreating real outdoor situations. Hunters can shoot at deer or wild boar, for example, and later check their performance on computer. In September of 2019, the Euroshot GmbH cinema shooting range opened in Steinenbronn, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. Hunters, police officers and sports marksmen all practise at the facility. Safety is the highest priority at indoor shooting ranges of this kind, which means that the legal requirements are very stringent. And this also applies to the floor covering. The flooring must ensure that the bullets do not ricochet and injure the shooters. For this reason, the operators chose to install a norament^® 945 grano rubber floor covering that is 22 millimetres thick and produced in a custom colour. This flooring is not only extremely resistant, it is also completely rebound-proof for handguns, rifles and shotguns. In addition, it has the required fire-protection properties.

Ricochet protection

In 2019, Euroshot GmbH opened a cinema shooting range, a multi-distance facility for dynamic or static shooting, a gun dealership, the Siebenmühlental hunting school and a shooting school in a former furniture store near Stuttgart airport. Safe handling of weapons has the upmost priority within this closed complex. Officers, security staff, hunters and sports marksmen can practise their shooting skills in the cinema shooting range or the multi-distance facility covering an area of over 400 square metres. "We wanted to ensure that the nora^® floor covering perfectly fulfilled the requirements for shooting ranges, including the long-term demands", says Dennis Bek of Euroshot GmbH. The company owner contacted a publicly appointed and certified shooting range expert for the safety of non-military shooting ranges employed by the Gießen-Friedberg Chamber of Industry and Commerce, a shooting range expert from the customs authority and a shooting range expert from the German federal police force. The reports of all experts confirmed that norament^® 945 grano was suitable. Shooting range assessors have now approved the shooting range for operation. The rubber flooring provides comprehensive protection against ricochets, rebounds and bullet fragments from handguns, rifles and shotguns up to 7000 Joules (certified in line with VPAM ARG 2012). The projectiles penetrate the resilient yet high-strength material and remain there until they are extracted. Dimensionally stable 1002 x 1002-mm rubber tiles will be installed loosely on the subfloor. The joints will then be sealed using nora^® joint sealing compound.