Hesseling Range now open for business

LIMA — The Hesseling & Sons company has a new building and a new name. A ribbon cutting was held Friday morning to commemorate the new changes. The business, Hesseling Range Firearms & Gunsmith, is now located at 3787 Elida Road, Lima.

Phil and Gennifer Hesseling opened the business seven years ago and continue to expand. The company now offers a larger retail space, classes, a laser range and an indoor pistol range.

“Before, we were a retail space,” Gennifer said. “The last few years we had our laser range where people could come in and train with laser guns. That is very different than a live fire training environment with a classroom and space where you can do classes.”

The live range is open for the public to use. Gennifer said there are several monthly packages starting at $24.99 per month. The business will not have contracts for range use.

“We are a local family, veteran-owned and operated business,” Gennifer said. “One of the big things for us when it came to a range was we did not want to lock people into contracts. People hate being locked into contracts — that is not how you treat your neighbors, your friends, your family. We want people to belong because they want to be here. When we started in the garage, this was always the plan. The plan was always to get here, to be in this space and do this. That is everything we did.”

In the future, The Hesseling Range hopes to use their 19 acres of land for an outdoor range and much more.

“We would like to have parts of it open within the next year,” Gennifer said. “We hope to have fishing, archery and paintball. I know guns can have a bad stigma in the media or certain sectors but we want to provide training and education so our community can understand guns.”

The store is open from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and noon until 5 p.m. on Sunday.

For more information call 567-712-6836.

Reach Precious Grundy at 567-242-0351.