GRAND RIVERS, Ky. — Ed White drove back from a business meeting in Phoenix expecting to find a parking lot full of wreckage. Instead, he found it cleared out.
White, the founder of Grand Rivers Shooting Range and the man who invented Metal Madness in his own backyard, suffered a heart attack earlier this summer. He is recovering and says he feels much better, but heavy work remains off the table for now. That timing was unfortunate. Grand Rivers is in the middle of an expansion, and demolishing the old shooting house left a pile of debris sitting in the parking lot with no one to move it.
Members of the Bethel University shooting team turned up while White was away and hauled the whole mess out in the Kentucky heat. They spent their Saturday on it.
“My heart is full, and I cannot put into words or express my gratitude,” White wrote in a message to the Metal Madness community after he got home. “Our shooting family is filled with caring and amazing people of all ages. The outpouring of support, cards, calls and encouragement for everyone is staggering and humbling.”
Anyone who has been to a Metal Madness match will recognize the shape of this. White built the sport around families, juniors and first-timers, and he has spent more than a decade insisting to anyone who would listen that the community made it work rather than him. A college team giving up a weekend for a range owner they didn’t have to help is that argument making itself.
These young shooters helped clear the way for a substantial expansion. Grand Rivers is adding 11 pistol-caliber bays to host USPSA, IDPA, ICORE and SASP alongside its own discipline, which will let Metal Madness run multiple events at once at its home range.
The annual Metal Madness Homecoming match at Grand Rivers Shooting Range was recently featured on an episode of “American Rifleman Television.” This year’s competition was a massive success, with an estimated 164,000 .22 Long Rifle rounds fired, shooters from 30 states in attendance and a prize table valued at more than $40,000. For the latter, industry support came from Vortex, Tandemkross, Ruger, Creekside Customs, Hunters HD Gold, Tippmann Arms, MaetherWorks, Tec Shield Elite, MOS Manufacturing and Volquartsen Arms.
Metal Madness is growing outside of Grand Rivers as well. The portable Easy Up system made its first out-of-state appearance this year at Red Brush Rifle Range in Newburgh, Indiana. Additionally, the MMSSA Future Shooters Initiative 501(c)(3) nonprofit is hard at work encouraging parent-child teams and certified-instructor coaching.
Learn more about Metal Madness and MMSSA at mmssa.net.
