Friday, October 14, 2011

Kitsap (WA) Rifle and Revolver Club


Central Kitsap residents disturbed by flying bullets and noisy gunfire appeared Wednesday in a Tacoma courtroom, as Kitsap County lawyers continued to argue their case against the Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club.

The county's lawsuit against the gun club, filed a year ago, contends that the club violated land-use regulations and created a public nuisance through noise and bullets leaving the gun range on Seabeck Highway.

The gun club, which denies the claims, is expected to begin putting on its evidence next week in Pierce County Superior Court, where Judge Susan Serko is presiding.

Deborah Slaton, a resident of Eldorado Hills north of the gun range, told the court Wednesday that Kitsap Rifle and Revolver Club entered her consciousness with a bang in 2007, when a bullet came through a back wall in her house and came to rest on the floor.
This is absolutely disgraceful. That place should have been shut down long ago. Don't these gun-rights people have any integrity at all?

A bullet went through the lady's wall and into her home and all these guys can do is hire lawyers to argue whether it came from the gun club or not?

We obvioulsy need a one-strike-you're-our rule for shooting ranges too.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

14 comments:

  1. "A bullet went through the lady's wall and into her home and all these guys can do is hire lawyers to argue whether it came from the gun club or not?"

    Because a bullet could not possibly have come from anyplace else.

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  2. I'm guessing that the cited instance is not the only one.

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  3. FWM, certainly a bullet could have come from someplace else, but the location of the wall as the house orients to the gun club would be prima facie evidence of that location as the source.

    I hope you would agree that absent any routine use of firearms in that area OUTSIDE of the gun club, the gun club is the more likely origin.

    Writing this as we keep rotating the dogs in and outdoors, depending on the sounds of gunfire in the area from - presumably hunters. I routinely see some really stupid and unsafe shooting, by people who easily meet any definition of hunters. Our greatest concern is that the drunk who just began renting the house next door from the son of the elderly woman who used to live there, will do something especially stupid. He gets falling down drunk daily, and boasts about the hunting he does and his guns. He personifies the person who legally owns guns, but who has a raging substance abuse problem that should prevent him from having weapons based on the repeated demonstrations of his lack of judgment and self-control.

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  4. I wonder if this bullet still had the shell casing on it, like other bullets "found" in cases similar to this.

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  5. "I wonder if this bullet still had the shell casing on it, like other bullets "found" in cases similar to this."

    That was my first thought too. Remember the Iraqi woman complaining about U.S. Troops shooting into her house?

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  6. Not My Real Name (because he doesn't like to publicise he's an idiot) said...

    I wonder if this bullet still had the shell casing on it, like other bullets "found" in cases similar to this.

    Can you back that up with factual sources? Or is this more of your bullshit?

    As county attorneys begin to wrap up their case, they are expected to call witnesses on Thursday who can discuss weapons, ballistics and shooting ranges.

    I think that discounts your spurious allegations that these are intact rounds.

    BTW, Nimbo, Are you aware that modern firearm rounds can travel up to 2 miles in distance?

    Or is that detail lost on you?

    When I was a kid, one of the rounds shot at the range I used travelled half a mile and seriously wounded a horse in the leg.

    So, I don't discount this report and understand their concern.

    If you knew as much as you think you know about firearms, neither would you.

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  7. I don't get that "intact round" business. Is that an attempt to discount the complaint completely? I suppose that one combined with FWM's suggestion that the origin of the shot might not have been the range at all, is enough to turn the whole thing into a circus.

    The fact is some shooting ranges have this problem. Sometimes it's because over the last couple decades housing has encroached into their vicinity. What was not a problem ten or twenty years ago is now. Other shooting ranges are run by nasty characters who don't give a damn about the neighbors.

    What should be done is the question. I say close the sumbitches down.

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  8. In the last several states in which I have lived it is impermissible to fire a weapon (handgun or long gun) within some defined distance of a dwelling place. That distance may change, depending on the character of the neighborhood, for instance whether it is rural or urban. I think 500' is the distance I usually have seen used.

    What is interesting is that at 500' you might be able to see the deer or whatever, but not the house that is 800' away, behind a screen of shrubbery and trees. At that distance a round from a modern hunting rifle or a military style semi-automatic rifle or carbine still has enough energy to wound or kill a human being.

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  9. Now we are getting to a point where I think the NRA is doing very little--conservation. In particular, the topic of Land conservation.

    Since it has become "conservative", it isn't going to fight the developers who turn the countryside into housing developments. You can't really shoot safely in developed areas for the reason that Democommie points out.

    Hunting is decreasing in the US as it urbanises (google "decline Hunting licenses in the US"). Thus the emphasis on guns for "self-Defence". But, that's a digression.

    I don't think the range owners are particularly nasty people. They just have a range that will be hard to offload in the current real-estate market (especially with all the lead on it). Tack that to people who feel they have a "right" to shoot and it makes for a nasty situation.

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  10. MikeB, I would not go so far as to demand the range be closed down. Investigate, see what is wrong with the situation, and see what can be corrected. It might be possible to work with the gun club instead of against it -- which could end up being more expensive and counterproductive.

    IF this is a case of the gun club being there first, they should not be shut down because other people ignored them being there when they developed around it, as relates to complaints about things like noise. On the other hand.... the gun club should be expected to keep the firing confined to their own property as well, including a buffer that guarantees no concerns about stray bullets of any kind. That might mean the gun club cracks down on what kind of weapons and ammo they allow to be used on their premises.

    But we don't have enough information here to know what happened much less who or what was at fault. The prima facie evidence would suggest the gun club, but that needs to be determined beyond the prima facie.

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  11. I still don't know what this means.

    bullet still had the shell casing on it

    About the shooting range being there before the homes were built, I'd say the homes have to take precedence. People live there. The shooting range should have long ago made the necessary changes to ensure that no single round ever ever leaves their area. If they attend to this only after complaints come in, they're already in the wrong, and it's a serious wrong not unlike the kinds of things I include in the one-strike-you're-out rule for individual gun owners.

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  12. ""I still don't know what this means.

    bullet still had the shell casing on it"


    MikeB, what NotMyRealName was referring to are a handful of incidents where people, not knowing any more about guns than what they see on TV, producing live (unfired) ammo and claiming they found it on their property.

    I mentioned the famous story a few years ago where an Iraqi woman claimed U.S. troops fired on her house and produced the "bullets" as proof. They were still in their cases and were obviously unfired. What was really bad is how Agence France Presse picked up the story and ran it before realizing that they had been duped and retracted it.

    http://michellemalkin.com/2007/08/15/msm-propaganda-watch-ready-aimnot-fired/

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  13. I appreciate the distinction you are making, but then I would ask you two things.

    First, do you agree that there is no possibility of a bullet doing damage, going through a wall,producing a bullet hole as a result?

    Because I would offer to you that the confusion about your question in this instance IS because there was a damaged wall and a bullet found INSIDE this home, not 'somewhere on the property'.

    Secondly, would you agree that finding unfired rounds on private property where you had not authorized anyone with firearms is a cause for concern? Let me extend that beyond 'on private property' to reasonable concerns about ammo elsewhere, because I don't think we really want unsupervised children playing with ammo either.

    If we have people carrying firearms responsibly, they should not be losing their ammo.,. or their firearms.

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  14. Thanks FWM, that's a riot that people have reported stuff like that. I believe it though.

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