Posted on 09/19/2011 5:08:36 AM PDT by marktwain
Don’t bring back the guns! That’s the plea from neighbors in Delafield. They want to stop a sportsman’s club from reopening, a year after a stray bullet hit a pregnant woman.
The Hartland Sportsman’s Club shut down in April of last year after a bullet grazed Raluca Buznea while she dined at a nearby brewhouse. The city council pulled the club’s permit when police determined its safety precautions weren’t effective. Now the club wants to reopen.
Those who live near the range are distributing twenty-five hundred pamphlets. At the end of next week, people in Delafield will find pamphlets tucked into their front doors. It argues the club is unsafe and a bad fit for the community. People are urged to join them in saying no.
Residents also commissioned a survey of 120 respondents. 80 percent called the club a “liability.” One wrote, “Residential areas are not the place for shooting ranges or any type of gun activity. There is plenty of land away from family areas where this can be done.”
The club’s attorney questions the survey. “You don't get to move next to a new neighbor and then force the neighbor to move and I think that what this is about. It's that simple.”
The common council will hold a public hearing on the club’s permit
The pregnant woman was hit with a spent bullet in a freak accident.
There is a picture of the woman showing her bruised belly at the site.
I worked with the woman who was hit - they were sitting in a both and the round came through the wall and hit her in the torso leaving a welt. She picked it up and asked what it was and one of her table mates properly id’d the slug. Then he stated “You’ve just been shot.” At first the manager of the place wouldn’t believe them. It was a really weird situation.
Still if they were there first and have resolved the safety issue they have the right to stay.
It is extremely rare for anyone to be hit by a shot fired from a range. This is the only one that I know of that has been verified.
I live within a few miles of a shooting range (which I used to belong to.) There are a lot of guns here in Wisconsin, and there are a lot of shooting ranges. Although there are a lot of houses much closer than my house to the range, no one around here is organzing a petition to get rid of it.
It’s been a while, but I seem to recall it was someone who discharged while not pointing down range - believe it was over 1500 yards from the resteraunt which explained the low velocity impact.
I think you misunderstand what the activists want in this case. They don't want a safe range. They don't want the range to be there, period.
The range has been there for decades, and this is the first instance of an accident off range. Weird stuff happens. The range has taken precautions to prevent this type of weird accident from happening again.
Do I get to guess that the gun club was there before homes were built by developers???
Same problem all across the country.
Airport- Shooting range—Horse stables—all there before the houses.....but guess who gets kicked in the crotch??
Okay, I see your point. For the sake of argument, I’ll grant that this sort of accident can never happen again at this shooting range.
Gun ownership is, however, a propaganda question these days. Our friends and acquaintances who don’t own guns will not likely be swayed to support us if we’re sticks-in-the-mud and refuse all accommodation - even if that accommodation seems unnecessary and based on unreasonable fears.
Many people can be won over to our side. But it won’t happen if we’re constantly crowing about our rights and carrying our ARs to the supermarket. That sort of in-your-face “Nyah nyah nyah!” behavior is not only childish but self-defeating. We need to understand the fear and ignorance even while we work to dispel it.
I don’t expect the owners and patrons of nudie-bars to want to accommodate the concerns of residential neighborhoods. After all, they’re adolescents in adult bodies. As gun owners, however, we are (or ought to be) responsible adults - which means taking into account the fear and ignorance of others, and accommodating accordingly.
That I don't know. However, it's easy to hear gunshots from where I live coming from the range. I've never heard anyone complain. But I live next to a neighborhood airstrip, so I'm used to noise now and then. I've got a farm on one side, and an airstrip on the other. We know what we were getting into when we moved here. No big deal.
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