I agree that shooting can be an intimidating thing to get into for newcomers. The way we try to get around the intimidation thing while ensuring safety is fairly low key.
There is an extensive safety briefing that all first time customers must have before being allowed on the range. We get some of thier shooting history out of them during this briefing, and if they have never shot before, someone will always spend some extra time with them on the range. This allows us to get them thinking safely from the start, and we can usually, in less than an hour, impart the very basic essentials of marksmanship, so that they will have fun. It is all done with a very relaxed attitude, more like a bowling alley than a shooting range. Any employee who treats the paying customers like a DI ( which I have never seen happen where I work, although I have seen it other places) will very quickly be unemployed.
We do not have designated range officers, as a matter of fact. Any employee or customer can call a cease fire upon observing an unsafe act, which will then be dealt with by an employee. We have video monitors so we can observe shooters without making them nervous or hovered over.
I spend a pretty good amount of time on the firing line test firing guns, explaining to people why you have to hold onto that Glock for it to work, clearing jams, removing squibs, sighting in guns, and giving the occasional lesson. Not to mention my own personal trigger time. It is amazing to me that I do not see more unsafe acts than I do.
I hated uptight idiot range officers, back when I had to deal with them, so much that I hope to never turn into one.
To the best of my knowledge, there has been only one serious injury at this range in fourteen years of operation, and that was a fatality. A woman who had been shooting there fairly regularly came in, rented a revolver, put twelve or thirteen rounds downrange into her target, and then one into her head.
So while I agree that there is a fine line between safety concerns and making the experience enjoyable, it can be done. Any range that cannot manage it is not staffed by professionals, and that is about all there is to it.
My livilihood depends upon attracting more shooters to the sport, and I am certainly not going to do anything of which I am aware to drive them away, although I have seen it done. I do not understand a lot of what goes on in the firearms business, why the customers get treated the way they do some places--you know what I am talking about. I just wish things were different, industry wide.
Stay safe, Cowboy
I especially like that orientation thing for first time customers. That would definitely defuse the anxiety, and let them know that safety is not some deep, mysterious secret known only to the men in green uniforms.
I really believe that everyone wants to be safe; they just don't realize what it takes to be so.
Many times I've tried to explain to non-gun people what is fun about shooting, and I've never succeeded to my own satisfaction.
It's just something that has to be experienced.
You stay safe, too, pard.
There's a lot of idiots out there, but it sounds like you've got a handle on them.