Fifteen lanes, one guest pass

FOC Gun Range says it is building a 15-lane facility in Ajax for a planned December opening. The public page describes two bays, one with 10 lanes and one with five, and says the Durham Shooting Club Inc. will operate the membership programme. The membership page sells guest passes before the doors are open.

That is a commercial announcement. The useful part for Canadian shooters sits somewhere less glamorous than the grand-opening render: the rules that decide who can stand at the firing line with a restricted firearm.

The handgun freeze closed individual ownership far more tightly than it closed supervised access. A guest can still have a lawful path to use a restricted firearm at an approved range. The path is specific. It runs through a real club-member relationship, direct and immediate supervision, the range's own rules and the approval framework that applies to the facility.

The range rule starts with the member

Section 6 of the Shooting Clubs and Shooting Ranges Regulations says a person may use a restricted firearm or prohibited handgun at a shooting range only if the person is an officer or member of an approved shooting club, or a guest of one. The regulation also requires the operator to keep guest records, including a licence number only if the guest has one.

That wording matters. The federal rule does not describe an open-door drop-in arrangement. It describes a guest relationship with a member of an approved club. For a new shooter, the practical question is whether a member can host them under the club's rules at a facility that has the approval the regulation assumes.

FOC's public pages say the facility is under construction and planned to open in December. They do not establish the approval status of the future range or club. This article cannot do that work for them. A planned guest pass is a sign of intent, not proof that every legal and operating condition has been met.

Supervision covers the possession problem

The other piece sits in the Firearms Act and Criminal Code. Firearms Act section 33 permits a person to lend a firearm when the borrower uses it under that person's direct and immediate supervision, in the same manner the lender may lawfully use it. Criminal Code subsection 91(4) creates the matching possession exception for a person using a restricted firearm under direct and immediate supervision.

The RCMP's current public guidance puts the same point in plain English: a borrower under the lawful owner's direct and immediate supervision does not need a licence for that supervised use. The agency still tells people to check the category of firearm and the applicable rules. That caution has substance at a range, where club status, approval and local operating rules sit beside the supervision rule.

This is the part that gets lost when the conversation ends at "handgun freeze." A person without a firearms licence does not gain a right to take a handgun home, carry it around or make their own range arrangement. They can use one inside the narrow supervised setting the law describes.

Ownership remains the locked door

The freeze is still real. Firearms Act section 12.2 says that an individual cannot be issued a registration certificate for a handgun. The RCMP lists limited individual exemptions, including certain Olympic and Paralympic sport participants and people with an Authorization to Carry. For almost everyone coming into the sport now, buying the handgun that fits their hand is no longer the normal next step.

That makes the guest route more important, and more fragile. It gives a newcomer a chance to see whether a discipline suits them, learn from a member and decide whether the sport earns the time. It does not give them a personal firearm, their own training rhythm or a transfer path waiting at the end of a lesson.

I learned the practical version of that problem planning a short range day around a handgun block. Guest cost, the person hosting and the available lane all belonged on the list before the session did. Interest alone never booked the lane. A person and a club did.

The government's argument has a clean line

The case for the freeze is simple enough to state fairly. Fewer privately held handguns mean a smaller civilian pool over time, while approved facilities can keep supervised recreation available. That is a coherent policy design if the aim is to preserve a tightly controlled activity without leaving ordinary people a durable ownership path.

The cost shows up in the handoff. A sport needs members who can bring a guest, ranges willing to run proper programmes and enough local capacity to turn interest into practice. A country can leave the firing line technically open and still make the trip there feel like an introduction that depends on somebody else's calendar.

Ajax's 15 planned lanes may help with capacity in one part of Ontario. The law supplies a narrow route for the guest. The range and club still have to make that route real.

Sources

• FOC Gun Range, About, accessed August 25, 2026. Source for Ajax location, construction status, 15-lane configuration, April 2026 groundbreaking and planned December 2026 opening.
• FOC Gun Range, Memberships, accessed August 25, 2026. Source for Durham Shooting Club operation, membership tiers and advertised guest-pass benefits.
• Department of Justice Canada, Firearms Act, section 33, page modified August 20, 2026. Source for lending under direct and immediate supervision.
• Department of Justice Canada, Criminal Code, subsection 91(4), consolidation current to June 21, 2026. Source for the supervised-possession exception covering restricted firearms.
• Department of Justice Canada, Shooting Clubs and Shooting Ranges Regulations, section 6, regulations current to June 17, 2026. Source for approved-club member and guest use at a shooting range and guest-record context.
• Department of Justice Canada, Firearms Act, section 12.2, page modified August 20, 2026. Source for the individual handgun registration-certificate restriction.
• Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Classes of firearms in Canada, page modified June 8, 2026. Source for current federal-programme guidance on direct-and-immediate-supervision lending and individual handgun exemptions.

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