Thread: New range laws and shooting on unregistered ranges

Originally Posted by NZVarminter

There are multiple pieces of legislation, regulation and mandatory design manual that cover what we will be able to do when shooting at inanimate objects!

The Arms Legislation Act 2020 is now law and this Act defines what activities are defined as shooting clubs and shooting ranges. This has been covered in some of the posts above

The Police have prepared a new Shooting Range Design Manual (Draft version released prior to the pending new regulations on the 2020 Act), which has the following paragraph:

"10.1 Sighting-in is a shooting activity and can be conducted on a certified range (provided it complies with that range’s standing orders). Areas set up for and routinely used by the public for sighting-in will need to be certified as a range. However, sighting-in that is conducted as an ad-hoc or occasional shooting activity does not require the use of a certified range, if it can be carried out safely, whether on private or public land, for example:
a. it is done by an individual or a small group of individuals (but not a shooting club); and
b. they are doing sighting-in as an ad-hoc or occasional activity (such as, prior to a hunting trip, or pre-duck shooting season); and
c. the public (or a club) do not access and use that area for sighting-in (for example, there are no established targets, or other indications that the area is used for shooting activities)."


The Police have issued a consultation document for the new regulations that will cover ranges and it does not say any more than the design manual on this point, however when the new regulations do come out (supposed to be in December this yr), they could well have some additional rules and requirements.

Wont really know where we stand until the new regulations come out at the end of this yr

Thank you for that summary, very informative.