Judge bans shooting at Scituate Rod & Gun Club
A group of Scituate neighbors has won a big victory in a long-running legal battle, after a judge prohibited any rifle or pistol shooting at the Scituate Rod & Gun Club.Forgive me if I'm just a teensy bit skeptical. We've heard of instances where "bullets" were really "intact cartridges - like the infamous photo of the Iraqi woman holding three .223 Remington rounds. I'm going to go out on a limb here and theorize that the "neighbors" are in a development that sprang up in the past, oh, 20 years. Scituate Rod & Gun Club has been operating since the Great Depression. NO ONE can claim that their house was there before the club - heck, it'd be a stretch for someone to say their parents' house was there before the club.
The club has been in litigation with neighbors over the rifle and pistol ranges since early 2009, when stray bullets allegedly were found on nearby propeties.
I'm more than a little fired up about this one, because my own gun club has come under some of the very same attacks. We actually had a real, verified instance where round *did* leave the range and struck one of the nearby houses, and it led to a significant and costly court battle. It was eventually revealed that the round was fired during a local PD qualifying shoot, which my clubs hosts regularly, so the furor subsided - but not before we were forced to make some signficant and costly changes to the pistol backstop.
It's the classic case of folks not doing their due diligence when moving into a neighborhood, whether the structure in dispute is a gun club, farm, or train station (and yes, we had one of those in the city next to ours where folks moved into a new planned neighborhood right next to the commuter rail and then were surprised they could hear trains. DUH! Didn't you wonder why the houses in that subdivision were selling for 20% less than anything else in the area?). This time, though, it seems like they might have a basis for a beef - or just a judge unsympathetic to the club insisting on the same sort of onerous and costly changes that my club went through.
If, in fact, there really were rounds leaving the range on a semi-regular basis, then this is a different story. The way this story - and others - are worded, though, makes me suspicious. There's no pictures of damage to any houses - and believe me, that would make for some fabulous anti-gun journalism right there, to show a nice bullet hole through the side of a tidy white colonial. The word "allegedly" keeps cropping up - and the media is not known for circumspection when doing an anti-gun hit piece.
I have a sneaking suspicion there's more to the story - but it does serve as a reminder to those of us who shoot in urban areas to be extra careful on rule 4...
That is all.
10 comments:
Rule 1: The media lies.
When it comes to guns, they lie openly, and refuse to admit it when they're caught.
I call BS on this story.
When I read the story, it seemed to me that the TreeHuggers have used the Gun Club issue to also try and Ban Hunting in their new "Green Space", which is right next door to the Club. So here's how the Antis will take it court using and "End Around."
First, they Ban Hunting, because it's "TOO DANGEROUS" for the Children who Play in the "Green Space." Then they say that a Stray Bullet from the Range MIGHT sneak over the Property Line and hit the Kids. So for the "Sake of the Children, Your Honor, we MUST shut down the Gun Club and ADD it to the Green Space, using Eminent Domain."
But the Anti Gunners keep telling us that they NEVER want to take away the Rights of Hunters, correct?
Unfortuantely even with careful design, baffles, berms, and everything else, if a range is accessible to members when no club officers are present then some idiot will go line up a bunch of pop cans along the top of the backstop and shoot at them. I don't know if that's the case here, but it does happen.
We have a similar issue with my range. There are people who live about 1.5 miles from the range claiming their houses are being hit by rounds from the range. The one bullet I've seen shown on the news was was measured to be 223. I have a hard time believing it could make that kind of distance.
The local newspaper has a few more details:
http://www.patriotledger.com/topstories/x787573294/Judge-extends-shooting-ban-at-Scituate-gun-club
Looking at Google Maps shows that the houses on Clapp Road and Heritage Trail (cul-de-sac off of Clapp Road) are approximately 1000m south of the berms on the rifle and pistol ranges. The trap and skeet range faces east and is not an issue here.
Using www.zillow.com, I searched on "Heritage Trail Scituate Massachusetts". You can see that several homes built after 1995 are for sale on those roads, as well as what was probably the year 1900 constructed Cape-style farm house that probably was the original house on the property before the newer houses were built.
seeing some of the same issues here in NC where a range has been for *many* years before houses started popping up around it..Pisses me off to end knowing people knew about the range when they moved in and are now bitching about it..
After reading the article I was struck by what was NOT said. The fact no specifics were offered makes the the whole story fail the "smell test."
The carpetbaggers as I called them managed to shutdown a club in Hollis, NH that was founded in 1922. Ultimately, NH has to pass a range protection pre-emption law, but the nitwits keep trying the same tactics still.
NIMBY's.
They buy houses around airports then file noise complaints.
They buy next to a race track then file noise complaints. Rinse, repeat.
This is precisely what is happening here in IL to the Buffalo Rock range. Coincidence?
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