Public Range at Shelby Farms

[Sky King]

With the up-comming elections depending on who wins, we should petition the new Shelby County Mayor to re-open the public range. To refresh the memories out there, the public range was closed by order or directive of the previous county mayor, member of Mayor Bloomberg anti-gun coalition, A.C. Wharton.

If Mark Luttrell wins, we need to communicate to him the need to have that range open again to the public.

[johnharris]

Yes, never accept a change as final.

[fl0at]

What was the argument? That the upkeep was too costly?

Wasn't the upkeep mostly done by residents of the Penal Farm?

[Sky King]

If my memory serves me, I believe the cost factor was the excuse. I felt it was totally bogus as it was one of the few things at Shelby Farms that you had to pay to use. They used penal farm trustees to work at the range doing things as basic maintenance, picking up brass, putting targets together and so on.

They also claimed that residents on the other side of the Wolfe River complained about the noise and they claimed that stray bullets were comming too close to their houses. This too was bogus because the dirt berm at the end of the range was so high that you couldn't shoot over it from the shooting position. To aim over the berm, you would have to come out from under the shooting position roof or shoot through the roof.

The only place the alleged bullets could be comming from would be from people shooting illegally down on the river which was between the berm and the residential area. But of course, the never bothered to investigate that, they just shut down the range.

If cost is a real issue, I doubt that many users would have objected to having the fee raised. It was still less than any of the other private ranges. Plus unless you are a member of MSSA, there is no location that provides a long distance range for rifles.

[fl0at]

I recall the issue of cost as being widely thrown around. I don't recall hearing the stray bullet argument. I would find that argument rather unfounded. I'm not sure which direction it faces, or if it is still in use, but there used to be a LEO range just on the other side of Walnut Grove. I doubt there was much complaint about "stray rounds" there, and those guys were more likely to do fire and maneuver.

I'd love to see the range back up and running, but I think it would require more than just a nudge from the mayor.

[Sky King]

The public range faced the south. The Sheriff's range faces the east I believe but it is way further away from residential areas than the public range was. Still I did a very rough check of the distance from the shooting area of the public range to the nearest residential area using Googlemaps and it appeas to be between 1/2 and 3/4 miles.

You said that you feel it would take a bit more than a nudge from the mayor to reopen the range. That may be true because another thing Mayor Wharton did was turn over the operation of Shelby Farms to the Shelby Farms Conservatory. However it is still a county park which means it is still county tax funded. It was a budget issue that shut down the range. I still think now Mayor Luttrell can have a major say in getting the range reopened and we definately need to petition for that.

[fl0at]

I absolutely agree. I wasn't saying we shouldn't do it because it might be difficult, I was simply stating that it will most likely require more than just a nudge from a new mayor.

We should definitely attempt, regardless of how difficult, and having Luttrell on our side could be a big boost in the right direction.

[Pat McGarrity]

Great point! We may be able to work Mayor Luttrell. I know him and have found him to be reasonable and fair for the most part. Wharton would never return my calls and e-mails, then threw a temper tantrum when I copied him making area gun owners aware of his non-reply. His e-mail reply is chronicled on this site. We offered volunteers and other solutions for the range, but could never get anywhere with the county on the range. Ideally, I'd like to see the range privately operated, which probably is the most efficient way.

In Liberty,

Pat