Posted on 01/17/2012 6:27:10 AM PST by marktwain
OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - A Washington state lawmaker wants to exempt shooting ranges from noise-related civil and criminal legal action.
The Kitsap Sun reports that Democratic Rep. Dean Takko of Longview has introduced a measure that would require shooting ranges to conform to noise laws that existed when they were built and exempt them from later laws. The aim is to head off complaints from people building new homes next to a shooting range.
(Excerpt) Read more at komonews.com ...
This would correct another ongoing abuse of zoning laws.
Instead of just focusing on Gun Ranges, why not expand this to include any/all businesses? Airports, Cement distribution, practically any factory; all of these businesses employ people. Due to the nature of their business, they may make noise, or smell bad.
People move into the area, because of the cheap land (because of the noise/smell) - then file suit to fine or shut down this pre-existing business. This is simply wrong.
Anti-gun advocates in the area have been trying to close this range down for a few years now by filing quite deceitful complaints about this range.
Our rabidly anti-gun DA has led the charge in ginned up complaints and legal efforts to close the range on several fronts. Faked complaints, proven impossible by ballistic experts in court, about bullets ending up in people’s yards or homes are the most egregious, but strident, highly implausible noise complaints, even from a loon living a few houses from me - which is seven miles from the range over heavily wooded hills and valleys - have been at the forefront.
My next door neighbor owns a 60 acre tree farm, on which he has an area he used in the distant past as a private range. He didn’t use it for a number of years, then went out there again one day shooting. The loon came out immediately foaming at the mouth, screaming and hollering about it, so out of neighborly consideration my neighbor stopped using it again. But now, with the threat to close the range mentioned in this story, he has vowed to open his private range up again to neighbors if the commercial range is forced to close.
Washington, surprisingly to most, is heavily armed, with one in fifteen adults possessing a CCW permit. If the range closes here, local folks will just go back to shooting in the dense tracts of rainforest here like they always have.
The problem exists with airports especially small ones.
How about confiscating and crushing every “Boom Boom” car. A Harrier in hover mode is Mozart in comparison.
Also surprising to many is that the State of Washington gives citizens greater protections in the use of deadly force that just about every other state; including broader authority than even law enforcement officers.
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