What would you say if there was a shooting range next door to your high school? I would have said ‘hell, yes!’ and joined said range in a heartbeat. It would have given me a place to shoot when I wasn’t in school, and place to leave my car and shotgun while I was in class. It would have been a win-win for me and my friends, but some people don’t see it that way . . .
The school board of Waukee, Iowa is building a middle school and high school in a formerly remote parcel adjacent to the New Pioneer Gun Club. Iowa isn’t known as a hoplophobic nanny state, but some neighbors have their panties in a wad over the construction of a new high school within 650 feet (the horror!) of a shooting range.
But here’s the deal: the New Pioneer Gun Club is a shotgun-only range with stations for trap, skeet and sporting clays. All of the firing lanes are pointed away from the schools or toward the interior of New Pioneer’s 100-acre facility, so no shot will ever leave the gun club’s property, and shot size is restricted to #9 birdshot. Club members are even building a fenced berm along their property line adjacent to the school grounds.
I don’t see how even the most thin-skinned neighbor (see what I did there?) could be injured by #9 shot from a distance of at least 215 yards. I’ve been pelted by shot rain from larger #4 birdshot from 200-odd yards away, and it hits with all the lethality of a thrown handful of gravel. I’m not sure #9 birdshot can even travel 650 feet when fired at a 45-degree angle, but even if it did it couldn’t hurt you unless you looked up and caught a pellet in the eye.
These angry neighbors, of course, really want the range shut down because they don’t like the distant, muted ‘crump’ of shotguns being fired. I haven’t been to a skeet range in decades, but I was always amazed by how quickly the sound of a shotgun is attenuated by distance. That Mossberg is deafening up-close, painful at 25 feet, merely ‘loud’ at 75 feet, and a polite ‘crump’ at 200 yards. Rifles, OTOH, are still painful at 50 yards and damned loud much farther than that.
From USA Today:
Some Stone Prairie residents say [the school siting] also sounds bad.
“All summer long and all Saturday morning,” you can hear gunfire, resident Donna Dressel said.
With the exception of special events, the facility is open Wednesday through Sunday, 1 to 8 p.m. on weekdays and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.
Lena and Wayne Schuck said they were unaware of the gun club until after they bought their home in Stone Prairie one year ago.
They were startled by nearby shotgun blasts as soon as they moved in, Lena Schuck said. “Had I known there was a gun club back there, I probably wouldn’t have bought the home,” she said, adding that she has made complaints to the city.
‘Startled by shotgun blasts?’ Doubtful at that distance. But even if they moved in right behind the berm at a 100-yard .50 BMG range, sensitive neighbors like this can go pound sand. They moved in last year, and New Pioneer Gun Club has been there for 52 years.
In legal terms, this is called ‘coming to the nuisance’ and the idea is very simple: if you don’t want to live next to a shooting range, don’t move in next to a shooting range. Newcomers are not allowed to move in next to the ‘nuisance’ (in this case, barely-audible shotgun reports) and then sue to shut it down.
I’ve got to hand it to both the school board and the shooting range, for sticking quite literally to their guns on this issue. I can only hope (in vain) that my local school board would be so sensible.
It’s bullshit like this that really pissed me off. The range is not a nuisance AND it was there first.
A similar thing happens when the suburbs bump up against agriculture — people love the idyllic ideal until they realize that farmyards have their own distinct smell (and sounds) and harvesting crops produces dust and noise. Far too much of society has been far too distant from natural human activities for far too long.
No doubt in my mind they’ll get the range shut down. These people know they can pull enough heartstrings (and purse strings) to get it done easily and the range probably can’t afford the legal protection.
I freaking hate these idiotic “NIMBY” who don’t do due diligence when purchasing a home. In my area, they’ve tried for years to shut down a small, private airfield and a racetrack. Both which have been there for 50+ years.
I had interviews for pt school at a couple schools and one had a shooting range across the street. It was so awesome. At one of the next interviews, I spoke with a girl I had seen at the last interview and we talked about the schools we had applied to. She went right to “I don’t know about that school it has a shooting range across from it” haha I think we were on opposite sides of that fence.
We passed legislation here in Tennessee to specifically prevent things like this from shutting down our long established ranges. My range is beside a school, a daycare, and surrounded by a 1000+ house neighborhood.
We did, to be a good neighbor, stop shooting tannerite.
I have to wonder how many noise complaints the city has received.
In particular, I wonder how many they’ve gotten when the range wasn’t even in use…
These are despicable, arrogant, self-righteous facists, so certain of their privileged status because they’re “progressive” that they think they can impose their whims on everyone else around them. I live in a semi-rural part of a county in Washington state and I see the same file creatures. Many have bought their “dream house” next to one or another farm, and come planting and harvest times, can’t stand the dust and noise. Notwithstanding that the dust and tractor noise should have been a factor in their considerations, they are determined to prevent anything from interfering with their “dream house” (until they find the next dream house) and instead of selling out and moving, petition the county to get a farm, which has existed for a century or more before they moved in, declared a nuisance, or a health hazard for all the dust, noise and pesticide fumes (which may not really exist if the farmer is organic. No matter). They’re despicable. And they need to be opposed at every council meeting.
I’d make sure my bulls were doing their business in in site of the offended twits.
The NRA range sourcebook says that the maximum range for #9 shot is 176 yards; 198 yards for #8, and 209 for #7 1/2.
“Had I known there was a gun club back there, I probably wouldn’t have bought the home.”
I guess that the homeowner was transported to the new home while blindfolded and wearing earmuffs. Isn’t it amazing that Schmuck, oops, excuse me, Schuck hears the gunfire constantly, EXCEPT when he was inspecting the house.
Hey, Schuck, oops, I mean Schmuck, you’re a lying jagoff.
I was laughing at the same thing. Then I thought, hmmm, the realtor probably only scheduled open houses during off times for the range.
This reminds me of how grateful I am to live in Alaska, where the ratio of those who appreciate guns to those who don’t is much higher than in most other places.
We have a makeshift range literally in our back yard; everyone in the vicinity knows it, knows us, and LOVES to come by and join us for a shooting session on a nice day since it’s so much cheaper than a membership to the Fish & Game owned ranges in the area.
Okay, I know that Alaska is really great — my old man loved it — but how do you keep your balls from icing up?
Handwarmer packets in my britches 😉
Only sometimes. The weather isn’t bad. Brutal, yes. Intolerable, no. It has a lot to do with the humidity; dry air doesn’t feel as cold as humid air, even though it may read as being the same temperature.
It’s been down about 5 below the last several days, and today’s high was around 17 and it started snowing, and I made the comment to a friend of mine “oh finally, it’s warm enough to snow!” Then I thought it over and realized how funny that sounds…
In all seriousness though, you get used to it. Once you’ve been outside in zero to negative 10 for a few weeks, 15 degrees starts to feel like sweatshirt weather, no joke.
ND born here. Ya sure you betcha – above freezing?
Thats when the old scandies start to take their clothes off for sunbathing, uff da!
Being an Austinite who enjoys live music, there is no kind of resident I hate worse that those who move into a location, ostensibly to take advantage of any culture or amenities present, and then complain, ad nauseum about said culture and amenities until they are either shut down or forcefully conformed to said resident wishes and expectations. Fuck those people.
I don’t know how Iowa works, but where I’m from the location of a new school wouldn’t have been asurprise (anyone know why a phone would refuse to space?)
There would have been planning commission meetings, school board meetings, city council meetings….
Then, when they actually decided to build a school, they’d have to ask for a millage increase to pay for it. That would be on a ballet describing exactly what it was for.
All of the above would also be covered on local TV and the daily fishwrapper.
I would think these people had at least SOME forewarning that a school was being built, where it was being built, and it definitely sounds like the range was already there.
Sounds like people too ignorant to know the proper times to raise dissent are now just bitching…..
I have shot at that range. They have great 5 stand sporting clays and some raised birds. You really have to snake your way back from the highway to get to the range. Waukee is expanding at a geometric rate but that is no reason to push out the established shotgun club. If I remember correctly its a private club. The only public range within 20 miles of Des Moines/Waukee is the DNR range up in Polk City. They have public hunting ground all around them and still get complaints from the neighbors about the sounds of the range. The same goes for complaints about noise from the Military range at Camp Dodge in Johnston. An army base there for over 100 years and the people who built a golf course next to it in the 80s are now complaining about the quality of life they have living next door to a base. LOL.
If I was a local homeowner, I’d be very happy to have a range nearby but I’d be very unhappy if I had to live anywhere near a school.
I live next to this website & I would like this shit hole shut down.
Is that you Shannon? Dirk! Dirk! Where is Dirk!?
I bought the Ruger SR-762 for $1,640 otd and dropped in a Giessele 2 stage trigger. It wears a 3x15x50 FFP Weaver Tactical scope on a Bobro mount. At the first range session, two of the three supplied P-Mags had multiple FTFs, FTEs, and light primer strikes. One mag ran perfectly. I changed ammo and had the same results at my second range trip. The Ruger customer service rep said they have had several customers with the same problem and have initiated a trade-in program for mags that are not running. My two bad mags were mailed to Ruger yesterday. Group size with precision rolled hand loads was barely sub moa, which is great. It ran steel cased ammo just fine at about 2.5 moa.
Before buying, I compared this with the Sig 716, the Ruger 762’s direct competitor in terms of price and features, and wrote up my take on their pros and cons (not published here). At the end of the day, I’d be happy to own either rifle for hitting steel out to 800 yards and hunting. There are higher and lower quality AR pattern 308’s out there, but this or the Sig fit my application well enough for me. YMMV.
I remember in the 90’s a bunch of outside agitators, I mean, community organizers whining and crying about minorities who have to live next door to landfills and endure that atrocious stench and it’s all oh so racist. Well.
Landfills, in many areas, not unlike gun ranges and airports, were established decades ago and often in the then-middle-of-nowhere. People buy the nearby property cheaply because, well, there’s this undesirable feature nearby. Adjacent property either wasn’t worth much to begin with, or whatever loss in value it may have undergone was endured by a long ago prior owner, not you here today. You don’t get to claim a loss that you never incurred, since your low purchase price already reflects the proximity to the dump down the street. And you certainly don’t get to be the johnny-come-lately who tells everyone else to go away.
What was the guy in the video looking at the whole time? He was at least 30 degrees off from the camera.
Cross-eye dominant.
Sorry to sound confrontational, in my time in the US Army I was taught many methods for “killing” armor, and the majority of them were with materials outside standard TO&E since the screaming Soviet Hordes would take out our supply points rather quickly. Simple fact is the most dangerous weapon you will ever face is the human brain, especially if it resides in the body of a human determined NOT to be subjugated by the adherents of an odious, anti-human ideology, whether they be Leftist Progressives, Islamic Caliphate-ists or the armed segment of your local Hairy Fishnuts commune. Roll on me and mine with armor? You best be prepared to burn in it cause I ain’t signatory to the UN Treaty banning incendiary weapons.
Una Salus Victus Nullam Sperare Salutem
They really should have to pay for those things, reimburse the federal treasury. Of course, if they had to do that they probably wouldn’t be able to get them. A person might wonder why the feds aren’t charging for them.
There are some localities that are actually passing laws specifically prohibiting nuisance lawsuits by more recent residents against existing gun ranges. I wrote about one in Washington state a few weeks back in the Digest. It’s important to get ahead of them like this because in most cases, the gun ranges don’t have the finances to fight a lawsuit, even if they’d ultimately win, so they’re forced to close.
Call of duty: ghosts
I think any time these are seen on the streets they deserve a constitutionally protected middle finger salute.
I absolutely hate people that move in and complain. I remember when the neighbors to raceway park complained and tried to have the race track shut down. Needless to say people sent death threats to the mcmansions and politicians. The track is still there.
PS- thanks for the review Tyler.
This does look like a real handy carrying strap, especially if you were hunting western areas with a rifle with bipod, planning on prone shooting mostly, after glassing in open country like the background of this vid. I have to say it helps me to have a couple different ways to carry on a long hike especially thru brush or over rough ground.
With a bipod, the stabilizing effect of a traditional shooting sling wouldn’t be so necessary, I’d guess, and I’d appreciate the “backpack-like” capability hiking in, if I were scrambling up and down hill and need my hands, or using a couple of walking sticks on uneven ground, talus, etc. Took a tumble over a rock cliff once with rifle held crosswise on my back, and I might have been more flexible/balanced for the bouldering if it were better centered.
BTW, you can also use those fancy hiking sticks crossed like ‘buffalo sticks’ for a quick rifle rest – per a tip by an old Marine and Native American who runs a long rifle range, whom I asked for tips once.
Rock on Ca.
But can our Sacramento overlords trace this via serial number? Is this that most feared of Scary Black Rifles – a Weapon of Mass Shootings that has no registration number, and therefore nothing that our “beloved” State government can track?
If so, I need to look into this possibility.
Thanks for providing a list of the tainted manufacturers that financially support the apparatus of a gun grabbing state tyranny.
“Mine’s bigger than yours.”
hahaha what a ballsy comment when one has a gun pointed at them.
CA is a little less depressing after that. I wish the millions of gun owners in CA had a stronger voice, but there are definitely some good manufacturers here fighting behind enemy lines.
You had me until you used the word “clips”. To me, it always sounds like the person doesn’t know much about guns when they say that.
Your sarcasm detector is acting up, I believe.
It’s funny, but I used to see shot up signs all over rural Missouri and Illinois. Nowadays, not so much.
What’s it all mean, Mr. Natural?
“Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.”
Henry David Thoreau
To me, shot-up road signs always seemed a reassuring sign of a healthy distrust for government and authority. Makes me feel warm inside.
Not suggesting I’ve ever shot one up; I don’t remember, as the government criminals always say… Could have happened. Hard to say!
A society that seeks to eliminate its rebels is a moribund society.
I’m imagining some younger couple, maybe in their early 20’s. Shielded from life. No grandfather to tell them of the Great War. No dad to tell them about hunting. No cool uncle to show them his collection, legal or otherwise.
They’re driving along, see that sign, stop, and just stare. Asking each other, ‘what on earth could have caused those holes’? (English accent, of course)
During a layover, inside the ‘secure’ area of the airport in London, We were eating dinner at a nice restaurant. Cutting my steak with a really nice, pointy, serrated steak knife.
My buddy and I thought the same thing at the same time.
Hmm, who’d a thunk, We did NOT have to be unarmed on the flight.
There have been a lot of these “stories” running in various news outlets lately. It is no coincidence that these stories are coming right before one of the busiest travel days of the year. This week, many people are taking the only plane trip they will make all year, and the media are playing on these people’s emotions with an extra dose of FUD.
I have no doubt that the 4th estate is fully complicit in fomenting fear among the masses.
I have to ask: Why was the lunatic the only one with a gun? Wait: are U ready? The answer is obvious, it was a gun free zone. The stupidity of management in declaring their business gun free zones is so ignorant that it is hard to understand why anyone would undertake such a policy. I would simply ignore gun free zone policy and CCW anyway. Let the owners or management sue me or have a prosecutor and the police arrest and prosecute me for illegal discharge or what ever. At least if I had to shoot a deranged shooter to save my own life I would be alive to fight the charges.
9million gun owners but 5 million gun owning gang bangers.
No response necessary..other than “Argo” and “Nunya.”
I wonder who the first person to be charged with failure to comply will be. I hope it happens soon, for the sooner someone is charged the sooner this assinine law can be brought to the courts.
“Come and take them”
In college, I shared a three bedroom apartment with two roommates, one of whom smoked so much pot that we nicknamed him “Captain Toke.” I didn’t smoke at all and the other only did occasionally, but neither of us wanted the place to stink like pot. So we compromised: Captain Toke could smoke, but his bedroom window had to be open, a towel under his closed bedroom door, and only one shared joint at a time (i.e., no bong parties with 10 of his loser stoner buddies.) It worked out fairly well for a semester, with everyone’s rights peacefully co-existing, the place not reeking, and no one making a federal or municipal case out of it. Then he flunked out so hard he had to transfer to public college and that was that.
Happy Thanksgiving to you & yours, RF, and many many thanks for the outstanding blog! Even the things with which I disagree tend to promote some thought, and that’s the point! I enjoyed my turkey-day down at my father’s place, running through a brick of SK 22lr, thinking of my hoplophobe friends and what they were missing!