Shooting range noise has area neighbors up in arms
Which has idiots like this:
That's not what people like Risner-Day want to hear. The 38-year-old mother of three lives on Washington Drive in Brentwood in a $410,000 home that she and her husband, Rob, bought three years ago.
They're complaining about the firing range at SigSauer. This range opened in 1996, which is nearly a DECADE before they bought their house (the story is from 2007). Look, if you buy a house in an area and you don't scout the area out first, shame on you.
And yes, this is kinda personal with me, because my gun club has run into the same kind of opposition. We've been there about 70 years or so, and developments built in the past 10 years have been giving us trouble over the noise. One yutz went so far as to call the cops on us, claiming that a stray round had hit his house.
I swear I am not making this up: He had a complete cartridge in his hand when the cops arrived...
It's the same kind of idiots that buy a house near a train station/highway/airport and suddenly discover the shocking news that there's a reason those houses were selling for less money than houses not right next door to the train station/highway/airport. They're upset at the hours of operation. They don't like the noise. They don't like the traffic. What they really don't like is the fact that they neglected to do their homework in advance of the purchase, and now want to use the bully pulpit of big .gov to make everything right.
And that's not the responsibility of the government no matter how much we wish it were so.
Look, if one of these entities is acting illegally, that's a different story. Show me a gun range where there's improper backstops and rounds really are leaving the range, I'll be the first agreeing that they need to correct that post haste before another round goes downrange. Show me a train station that's running in excess of their posted hours, or an airport that's maliciously dumping fuel on neighboring houses, I'm all for going after them with the big hammer of fines.
But don't get all pissy when something you knew about in the first place fails to change to suit your liking. You bought the house, or took the job, or otherwise accepted things as they were from Day One. If you don't like it, you've got no one to blame but yourself. Running to the government to make things all better only empowers the bastards - they WANT you to think that the government is the only possible way things can be fixed (Hmm, now where does that sound familiar?).
Accept some damned responsibility for your bad choices, man up, and do something about it other than whine.
That is all.
13 comments:
Nah, they'll just sue... assholes... sigh
In the enlightened Democratic Peoples Republic of Massachusetts there is actually a statute that grandfathers firing ranges against noise complaints so long as they were in compliance with existing rules when they started to operate:
Chapter 214: Section 7B. Noise pollution; shooting ranges; exemption from liability; hours of operation
Section 7B. Notwithstanding the provisions of any general or special law, rule or regulation to the contrary, no owner of a rifle, pistol, silhouette, skeet, trap, blackpowder, or other similar range shall be liable in any civil action or criminal prosecution in any matter relating to noise or noise pollution resulting from use of the range, provided said owner of the range was in compliance with any applicable noise control law, ordinance or by-laws in existence at the time of the construction of such range.
No owner shall be liable in any action for nuisance, and no court shall enjoin the use or operation of said range on the basis of noise or noise pollution, provided said owner was in compliance with any noise control law, ordinance or by-laws in existence at the time of the construction of the range.
The exemptions from liability and the immunities from prosecution provided in this section shall also extend to any owner who, in order to satisfy a requirement of law, regulation or by-law, relocates his range within the same parcel of land or a contiguous parcel of land, owned by him at the time that the commonwealth or its political subdivision commences enforcement of such a requirement or that the owner voluntarily complies with such a requirement. In order to maintain these exemptions from liability and immunities from prosecution, owners who relocate their ranges pursuant to the preceding sentence shall remain in compliance with the applicable noise control laws, ordinances or by-laws in existence at the time of the construction of the original range described in the first paragraph.
No standards in rules adopted by any state, city, or town agency for limiting levels of noise in terms of decibel level which may occur in the outdoor atmosphere shall apply to the ranges exempted from liability under the provisions of this section. Such ranges shall be prohibited from operating between the hours of ten o’clock post meridian and eight o’clock ante meridian unless otherwise allowed by the local governing body.
We lived in the UK for a year, within earshot of the Ministry of Defence firing range at Bisley.
You don't confuse the noise with something else. Or not notice.
CW,
That explains a lot, thanks.
The complaints - off the record - are about the noise.
What's been filed are along the lines of "I hear bullets whizzing by my house" - hence the guy producing a cartridge (complete, intact, unfired bullet/casing/primer/powder).
What complicates matters is that we did actually have a round leave the range.
By a cop using the range during his PD's qualification shoot...
Accept some damned responsibility for your bad choices...
While I agree with your sentiment 100%, that, right there, is the entire crux of the problem - people have absolutely no concept of personal responsibility any more. Everything is always someone else's fault, and if not, it is something else's fault.
There is a remarkably nice range here in town with me, and there are a lot of nice houses around it - every time Better Half and I look at any of those, I remind her that we can hear the range from there, and we take that into consideration. But evne that simple forethought, the simple act of scoping out your neighborhood, is lost on most people today, and, as Old NFO indicated, they would rather sue someone than admit that they should have done their homework.
If you ever want a perfect example of why America is the way it is today, and why we are headed down the path we find ourselves on, this would pretty much be it.
Hearing bullets whizzing by? Isn't that noise?
How did the cops react to being told that entire unfired cartridges were whizzing by that guy's house? Most of the cops I know have a fairly low tolerance for blatantly lying complainants. Does the guy have a FID? If not, it could be a crime for him to possess the cartridge he showed the cops...
It occurs to me that the Sig range is not exactly in a quiet neighborhood, being right across the street from New England Dragway, which has been in operation there since 1966.
Jay,
As sad as this story and as pathetic as the complainants are, there is in fact a series of law suits going on in the UK at the moment against the noise from... now wait for it... racetracks.
Yes, people have begun to complain about those pesky 'oh so easy to hide' speedways.
http://forums.vwvortex.com/zerothread?cmd=print&id=4221256
This irks me on 2 levels. First of all, 99% of the tracks in the UK are built on WWII airports. There was never anything around them, in fact they were specifically built in the middle of nowhere to avoid being spotted and then bombed by the Luftwaffe and they were HUGE. So there is no 'I was here first' argument.
The second part that gets to me is the fact that you have to go out of your way to live near a speedway. They tend to have hundreds of acres of parking space around them as well as the relevant offices, garages, workshops and industrial areas between them and any possible habitation.
I live close to a Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base. Things can get a little noisy during reserve weekend. When people comment about the noise, I tell them, "That's the sound of freedom."
Postscript - They also have had planes on strip alert since 9/11. When you hear a flight of 2 taking off on full burner after 1900 hours, you can bet something is up.
Thank you, River Rattlers
It's all those assholes who moved to Brentwood a couple years ago.
Oh, wait...
And, yes we do hear the action on the range - ahhhh, the sweet sound of select-fire hardware in the summertime - quite clearly from the back deck.
And, oh yeah...
The sound of the jet-powered funny cars coming through the woods from the New England Dragway?
Love it.
Virginia Beach VA is full of such assholes who bought a house near Naval Air Station Oceana (which has been there since 1942 or so) and then wanted the place crippled by noise ordinances.
Worst thing the Navy ever did, closing Cecil Field FL and moving the Hornets to Oceana. Now they regret it.
I moved into a townhouse about 2 years ago. The realtor told me that the rails nearby are used by a commuter train that you can't hear unless the windows are open. This is true. During the night, the tracks also happen to be used by a major freight line that shake the heck out of the building. The realtor was tricky, but it's never occured to me to call the railroad and tell them they're interrupting my sleep and they need to stop or relocate their trains for my convenience. (Maybe I should, just to give them a laugh.) If you can't check your neighborhood, it's your own damn fault -in my case, my damn fault.
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