|
| |||||||||||||||||||
Poisonous PastimeThe Health Risks of Shooting Ranges and Lead to Children, Families, and the EnvironmentSection Two: The Rambo Factor, "Slob Shooters," and Other Sporting Curiosities"I think if you plan it well enough, you won't shoot up any more trees than you have to, and many trees recover from being shot if you move the station around. You just can't shoot the trees to pieces. I have seen courses where the same shot was presented year after year; it actually looked like a forest fire or a nuclear blast had occurred." —William L. Poole, Director, Division of Recreation Shooting, Training and Ranges, National Rifle Association (October 1993) The gun industry and its surrogates publicly conjure shooting ranges as public palaces for old-fashioned family fun. But, shooting ranges attract or generate major problems (other than the health and environmental nuisances described in the preceding section) that make them unwelcome neighbors and downright dangerous sites.
Gary Anderson, the NRA's executive director for general operations, coined the phrase the "Rambo factor" to describe one problem that modern shooting ranges (and their neighbors) face. His language was diplomatically phrased, but extraordinarily revealing, because it belies the notion that shooting ranges are mostly places where the gentry gather for controlled, precision marksmanship. On the contrary, the gentry more often just want some place to blast holes through things. Says Anderson:
The "Rambo factor" not only affects the users of the shooting range. It also raises concerns for the range's neighbors. One reasonable source of concern is that, as noted in the preceding section, the industry itself has found that most ranges are not professionally managed. The lack of professional management leads one naturally to wonder exactly who at those ranges is capable of dealing with shooters who, in Anderson's words, do not have "the discipline, control or marksmanship skill to keep their shots on the targets." Cutting corners is serious business in the case of shooting ranges, because—in the words of R. Max Peterson, executive vice president of the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies—shooting ranges "can be dangerous if improperly operated or maintained."96 It is small wonder that "successful range operations face a formidable public relations challenge."97 Bullets that don't land in what Anderson delicately calls the "anticipated impact area" on the range can end up in an unanticipated impact area off the range—such as in a neighbor's house or head. "Many ranges operate today knowing a single projectile or a shot charge landing off the range property means closure," federal Fish & Wildlife Service deputy direct Conley Moffett told a tax-funded industry symposium.98 News accounts from all over the country confirm that stray bullets from shooting ranges are not merely theoretical concerns but real problems for nearby residents.99 The "Rambo factor" also creates friction between hunters and non-hunting shooters at public ranges, as Peter S. Duncan, executive director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, told the symposium:
In plainer English, the would-be Rambos are pushing the hunters off of shooting ranges.q Another NRA official, William L. Poole, director of the NRA's division of recreational shooting, training and ranges, told a shooting range symposium about a special kind of management problem with sporting clays ranges:
The nonchalance of that "prevailing attitude" toward non-shooters is reflected in other problems documented in many shooting ranges.
U.S. Forest Service officials report that use of public outdoor firing ranges in national parks brings with it "unsafe acts, illegal weapons and ammunition, litter and destruction of property and signs."102 The NRA's Anderson unintentionally confirmed what many critics of the "shooting sports" argue—that so-called "recreational shooters" are often little more than reckless vandals who threaten the lives of others, even at shooting ranges. Says Anderson:
But, with respect to Anderson's last point (getting more shooting activities onto "safe" ranges), one is reminded of his earlier lamentation—quoted earlier—that because of "poor marksmanship or an unthinking attraction to targets that break or an occasional lack of responsibility, many shots fired on ranges do not hit the targets or anticipated impact areas" even at shooting ranges! Examples of shooter abuse on both open land and public shooting ranges abound. David E. Wickstrom, a recreation planner from the U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management, told a shooting range symposium: "Open areas available for shooting, such as gravel pits, often become littered with refuse left from use."104 He described the situation mildly. In 1992, American Rifleman carried a detailed account entitled: "Gross abuse of a public shooting area by slobs with firearms forced its closing."105 Although the gun industry likes to publicly portray gun owners as uniformly responsible citizens with only a few "bad apples," the author, a federal Bureau of Land Management official wrote that "we estimated that somewhere between 30% and 40% of the apples were bad." Because the agency could not afford to station an employee at the range, wrote the official, "we trusted the good sense and ethical standards of the shooting public. We were very disappointed by the result." Among the problems observed were the following:
The U.S. Forest Service has suffered similar experiences at the hands of shooters. Until 1988, target ranges were unwelcome in national forests "due to problems of littering, safety, and administration," according to John Shilling, chief of concessions and winter sports, speaking at a 1990 range symposium. "Current policy allows target ranges only when and where they will enhance forest management by consolidating shooting activities, thereby reducing vandalism and litter associated with dispersed target shooting."107 In plain English, Forest Service policy is to tolerate a shooting range only when shooters become so obnoxious that putting them all in one place makes more sense than letting them destroy the forest. Shilling cited the example of Forest Service experience at the Angeles National Forest in southern California. Originally, shooters were allowed to shoot anywhere in the forest, so long as they "followed guidelines such as distance from structures and places of habitation." But slob shooters got out of control under the "open shooting" policy:
In order to save the forest from the shooters, the Forest Service eventually allowed a commercial operator to open a public range and banned all open shooting in that forest. Fires caused by shooters were also a problem in the Cleveland National Forest in southern California, a Forest Service representative told a national shooting range symposium,109 and fires at open shooting areas continue to be a problem in other forest areas.110 Forest Service official Jerry W. Davis described the kinds of "misuse and abuse" of firearms he has seen, and their effects on the environment and the public at the same symposium:
But closing open lands and forcing shooters onto ranges is expensive and brings other problems. Lyle Laverty, director of recreation, heritage, and wilderness resources for the federal Forest Service, told the symposium:
Vandals at Forest Service shooting ranges "shoot signs, displays, roofs, toilets, garbage containers, and posts," Laverty's colleague, Davis, told the same group. "They litter and have been known to use wooden shooting benches for firewood."113 State officials have similar problems maintaining public ranges. Pennsylvania state land management officials described how some shooting ranges literally become garbage dumps:
The Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks had to overhaul a free outdoor range under similar circumstances. According to an official, the lack of a range officer at the range led aficionados of the "shooting sports" to engage in the following family fun:
NRA official William L. Poole described the destruction that can be wreaked by a sporting clays shotgun course in a wooded environment:
Vandalism often sets in when ranges open to the shooting public are not staffed, or are understaffed. For example, public ranges often depend on volunteer help. But when volunteer interest fades, vandalism and other problems follow, as Nebraska state officials described at a range symposium:
The message for local communities is that the nice, orderly range down the street has the potential of turning into a dangerous eyesore as soon as its users get tired of their new tax-funded toy. Not incidentally, the use of volunteers may also open ranges up to tort liability, if the range fails to check the background of its volunteers and harm results from allowing unsuitable persons to operate the range such as, for example, a "person of violent disposition."118 In short, public land managers are caught between two evils. If they allow so-called "open shooting" on public land, "slob shooters" often abuse the trust extended them by vandalizing public property, littering, and even dumping garbage and hazardous waste. On the other hand, corralling such shooters onto a shooting range imposes operating and liability costs on the taxpayer, simply to indulge (and control) these reckless gunslingers.
Zoning violations and the high levels of noise inherent in shooting range operations cause the majority of complaints about them, according to the NRA's general counsel.119 Many shooting ranges have been involved in "costly litigation" and some have closed because neighbors objected to noise, especially during early morning or late hours.120 "Noise continues to be a major concern on our project and unless your project is built in a vacuum it will be on yours," Michigan state officials Bruce Gustafson and James Dabb told a shooting range symposium. "Persons living in proximity to the proposed site invariably are concerned with the potential disturbances to their ‘quiet' neighborhood."121 According to the NRA's Range Manual, a comprehensive technical guide for designing and constructing shooting ranges: "No set distance eliminates noise complaints entirely."122 The manual, which devotes an entire chapter to the subject of noise pollution, generally recommends allowing a "maximum distance between the range and inhabited dwellings," and "where it is possible to do so, build a range on government-owned land that will generally have the advantage of noise buffer areas." The manual suggests a distance between homes and range of at least one half mile for ranges generally, and three quarters of a mile for trap and skeet ranges (where shotguns are used). "Controlling sounds coming from shotgun facilities is almost impossible," according to the director of the Delaware State Division of Fish and Wildlife, paraphrasing advice he got from the NRA on the problem.123 What might be called the "ostrich approach" to shooting range noise was urged on a range symposium by NRA official William L. Poole:
Another problem that the gun industry doesn't like to talk about is people killing each other (and themselves) at shooting ranges. For example, former U.S. Congressman and NRA board member Harold L. Volkmer painted a rosy picture of range safety in his address to the first shooting range symposium (for which he was paid a $1,000 honorarium).125 Volkmer said "the use of shooting ranges takes the danger that arises from inexperience out of the picture."126 But in a 1994 article, Shooting Industry writer Ross Thurman offered a considerably different expert opinion on the safety of shooting ranges:
Thurman's account is not an isolated example. A reader of Guns & Ammo wrote a letter to the magazine in 1986 to describe "a situation that was unbelievable" at a shooting range:
The president of a New Jersey insurance company summarized the type of insurance claims filed against shooting ranges. These included eye injuries to shooters and spectators, often caused by ricochets; persons shooting themselves unintentionally; death from fire caused by muzzle flash igniting foam insulation; suicides; and, injury from an exploding handgun.129 News accounts from all over the country again confirm that suicides,130 unintentional shootings,131 and even murders,132 occur with depressing frequency at shooting ranges (often involving handguns rented at the range itself). Lawyer Anne Kimball told participants at a shooting range symposium that "it may be advisable to require all range users to have passed an NRA instruction program."133 But there is little evidence that many public shooting ranges impose even such a basic standard of care and prudence on paying customers. William L. Poole, director of the NRA's division of recreational shooting, training, and ranges, described at a shooting range symposium the apparently widespread negligence by shotgunners. Musing on the duties of "pullers" (the people who release targets at trap and skeet shotgun ranges) Poole said:
Other problems include whether fully automatic weapons should be allowed at public ranges. Missouri found itself at odds with the NRA when a proposal was floated to ban machine guns from ranges on the grounds that they destroyed target stands and unnerved other shooters.135 (The NRA opposes restrictions on private ownership of machine guns.)136 Ranges also often bring increased traffic problems to nearby neighborhoods, with the associated noise and congestion.137 q) It should also be noted that Duncan's remarks further undermine the "hunter safety" rationale that the industry uses as its excuse for siphoning federal tax funds into shooting ranges. By his account "non-hunting users" dominate the use of many ranges.
Back to Table
of Contents
All contents © 2001 Violence Policy Center
The Violence Policy Center is a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America and works to develop violence-reduction policies and proposals. The Center examines the role of firearms in America, conducts research on firearms violence, and explores new ways to decrease firearm-related death and injury. |