Finland plans to open more than 300 new shooting ranges to encourage more citizens to improve their shooting skills in the interest of national defense.
Authorities in Finland, NATO's newest member that shares a 1.330-kilometer border with Russia, hope shooting could become as popular as soccer or ice hockey. At the beginning of the century, there were about 2.000 shooting ranges in Finland, and now there are about 670. The government plans to increase their number to about 2030 by 1.000.
"This is because of our defense model, which benefits from people having and developing their own shooting skills," the chairman of the parliamentary defense committee, Juko Kopra, from the ruling National Coalition Party, told The Guardian.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the popularity of voluntary training courses aimed at teaching reservists and civilians how to defend Finland has doubled. The number of Finns who have applied for gun licenses has also increased significantly.
The Finnish defense training and education association MPK held 116.000 training days last year, which is significantly more than in previous years when they were usually around 50.000.
Director of the MPK, Antti Lehtisalo, said that there is a great enthusiasm of Finns to defend their country and that the participants of the courses need to practice their new skills in shooting ranges after completing the training.
"One part of this training is of course shooting education, because people want to be part of this comprehensive security, so they come to our courses and after that we need more shooting ranges," said Lehtisalo, adding that shooting is only allowed in shooting ranges.
The Ministry of Defense announced that it plans to "protect the activities of Finnish shooting ranges and to promote the opening of new ones".
A spokesman for the ministry said that processes for obtaining permits and laws related to shooting ranges will be improved.
"The goal is that by the end of the decade the number of outdoor shooting ranges will be around 1.000. The focus will be on setting up a sufficient number of rifles and tactical ranges across the country," he said.
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