Homeowners up in arms

More than 100 irate newcomers crowded into a meeting room at the Aliante Public Library Wednesday evening, jeering, heckling and throwing things at elected officials and Clark County staff invited to explain plans -- 24 years in the works -- to build a 900-acre shooting park in the empty desert northwest of the northern terminus of Decatur Boulevard.

"Get it out of here! We don't want it!" shouted resident Jeff Peters, who 14 months ago moved into a home in Carmel Canyon, a new subdivision about a mile from where the $64 million facility will be built.

The residents complained home builders did not tell them the shooting park was planned when they bought their homes.

Jennifer Knight, a county spokeswoman, pointed 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, she said.

Those plans and meetings received prominent coverage in this newspaper -- and not in the "fine print." What else was the county supposed to try? Sky-writing?

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. The 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 anger and foot-stomping at this point are misplaced for several reasons.

First, this is Nevada. Private ownership of firearms and participation in the shooting sports are long-standing traditions. More guns are sold and registered in Nevada, per capita, than any other state. More than one-third of Nevada households are armed.

County officials point out there's already a skeet range at Floyd Lamb Park, half the distance from these homeowners as the planned new facility. Number of noise complaints to date? None.

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?

Millions have already been spent shifting the actual ranges farther to the north.

Shooters themselves stand to lose quite a bit from this new arrangement. Because the shooting park will almost certainly be used as an excuse to ban outdoor shooting almost anywhere else in the valley, gun owners stand to lose their remaining freedom to drive out into the hills and shoot anywhere they want. Shooting in a park with other people requires range discipline for safety purposes -- perfectly sensible, but still a restriction compared to shooting alone in the desert.

Shooters will make all these compromises in the interest of safety.

The suspicion lingers, enhanced by comments at Wednesday's boo-fest concerning the risk of people "driving through our neighborhood with guns in their cars," that the concern here is not noise at all, but simple hoplophobia -- fear of arms.