well, i'm not ranged at all. xD
I'm using calamity + thorium mod and having a blast -- but there are no ranged weapons except for the Talon Burst which SUCKS now (im in EXPERT mode!

)
I don't know about Calamity, but in Thorium there are plenty of pre-Hardmode ranged options.
You can get the Arms Dealer (with Flintlock and Minishark) as soon as you reach Snow biome... just get an Icy Shard, make Ice Ball ammo and he'll show up, since he just looks for bullets, not guns.
Frost Pelter sucks, but Harpy Pelter isn't too shabby early on, especially if you can farm the goods and craft one with a decent mod... it autofires and fires two shots at a time (in a row, but it DOES use two rounds per shot).
Undertaker (crimson) is meh but Musket (corruption) isn't bad... slow, but high damage, nice knockback, and autofires.
If you have Tide Hunter, you should have the mats to make Hydro Cannon, which is NICE... poor accuracy, but fair damage, fires fast, autofires, makes some light and doesn't use ammo! You can also make Shark Storm, which is basically a slightly upgraded Minishark. The Blunderbuss from the Jellyfish Queen is also surprisingly nice... it's good close-range damage, if you can get three or more bullets to connect. Its uniform spread makes that fairly easy... it's almost like the ranged fighter's melee weapon. Step up and unload in their face for joy.
I'm not a fan of the early bows, but The Champion's Trifecta-Shot and the Bee's Knees are surprisingly good. The ultimate ranged pre-hardmode goal would be the Hemorrhage... it's strong damage, healing, autofire, pretty fast, and uses no ammo, so you can put Hydro Cannon away. Hit Scanner is also nice to have... it's fast, good damage, autofire, and the effect means it pretty much hits right where you put your cursor. The effect works with normal rounds AND silver rounds, which is a plus.
Tide Hunter's effect does extra damage that's some fraction of the hit's damage (not sure how much) to everything in is area of effect (so it'll mess up stacked monsters) AND can kind of disrupt some monsters' attack patterns, since it also tosses them up. It's some nice additional damage. Weapons that hit more often will trigger tentacles more often, but weapons like the Minishark will end up giving you lots of 1-damage tentacles. It's kind of a trade-off until you can get weapons that are both fast and strong. It's great fun to use on monsters like Dripplers, though!
