Fired up over local shooting park

A group of northwest valley homeowners filed a lawsuit against Clark County on Monday, attempting to stop the construction of a shooting park so far north of town that it abuts a mountain.

The plaintiffs object to the location of the park, still under construction.

The park -- to include a 1,200-yard high-power rifle range, 125 trap ranges and 24 skeet ranges -- is located between Decatur Boulevard and Buffalo Drive, just north of Moccasin Road at the base of Sheep Mountain.

The distance from the edge of the complex to the nearest new home is half a mile, the litigants contend, placing the project within walking distance of Shadow Ridge High School and K.M. Ward Elementary School. That's much too close in a era where school shootings have become all too frequent, they argue.

Jennifer Knight, a county spokeswoman, points out the county has held 18 public meetings since 2000 in which the park was discussed. Notices were sent to houses within a nearly 4,000-foot radius of the site in late 2005, and signs were posted on a road near the property.

These complaints are nothing new. Last February, more than 100 irate newcomers crowded into a meeting room at the Aliante Public Library, jeering, heckling and throwing things at elected officials and Clark County staff invited to explain plans -- 24 years in the works -- to build this shooting park in the empty desert northwest of the northern terminus of Decatur Boulevard.

At public shooting ranges where sensible safety rules are enforced, in shooting events sponsored by the National Rifle Association, the U.S. government (through its civilian marksmanship program) or the Boy Scouts -- which is to say, at about 99 percent of all U.S. shooting events -- fatal accidents in recent decades have been so minimal that we simply can't locate any.

Don Turner, the county's shooting-park expert, says noise from the facility must be kept below 57 decibels; that additional berms and other barriers to muffle the noise will be built if the noise signature is measured above those levels in populated areas.

It's understandable that families who have just invested a sizable nest egg in purchasing a new home may be concerned about anything they fear could impact their resale values or quality of life. These residents may have a bone to pick with developers or real-estate salesmen who failed to disclose information about the long-planned shooting park -- though notice requirements typically involve 700-foot or quarter-mile proximities, with "caveat emptor" increasingly applying at greater distances.

But one hopes if the courts allow this lawsuit to proceed, they will at least warn plaintiffs that they will be responsible, should their lawsuit succeed, to reimburse Clark County taxpayers for all funds allocated on this project to date, as well as for the full costs of siting a new park somewhere else -- Rhyolite, perhaps, or up near Alamo?

In years past and even today, it's been accepted practice for local residents to drive out to any number of draws and box canyons within sight of the city to do their target practice. Development of the shooting park has been under way for two decades because far-sighted officials foresaw a day when the sprawl of homes toward the foothills would render those old shooting patterns less safe.

If these homeowners were to succeed in getting the shooting park killed, have they considered the alternative? Would they really like thousands of local shooters to return to their traditional plinking in the draws and gullies on which these new homes now encroach -- without any of the added safety provisions being designed into the new park?