GUN RANGE PROSPECTS are as good on the North Olympic Peninsula as anywhere.
Three shooting range proposals are making news locally.
The Jefferson County Sportsmen’s Association has applied for an expanded operating permit and is negotiating with Jefferson County to lease additional acreage.
Expanding the 40-acre site adjoining the sheriff’s animal control shelter would accommodate a new 25-50-yard pistol range.
The Sportsmen are also asking to expand hours for recreational shooting on Sundays, and to open Mondays for police officer training only.
Joe D’Amico, president of Security Services Northwest Inc. in Jefferson County, has a new proposal designed to preserve firearm training opportunities while ending noise complaints from Gardiner-area neighbors.
After spending five years and $800,000 defending his existing range on private leased property, D’Amico is seeking $1 million in federal funding to build a two-story indoor shooting range.
He offers two alternatives, one site in Jefferson County, the other across the line in eastern Clallam County.
Meanwhile in Clallam, the public process is inching forward on the currently preferred site for a range that would replace one the county closed in 1968, when it expanded other recreational uses at Salt Creek near Joyce.
A Sept. 23 informational meeting at the Port Angeles Senior Center, 328 E. Seventh St., from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., will look at what is called the Sadie Creek Reconveyance. (See www.dnr.wa.gov.)
Clallam County has formally asked the state Department of Natural Resources to return a 320-acre parcel roughly seven miles west of Joyce, which the state currently manages for production of timber and other resources.
Asking and getting are two different things.
After a lengthy public review process, reconveyance requests are presented to the state Board of Natural Resources for approval or denial.
State law allows land to be reconveyed to a county only for a public park purpose.
In this case, the site would be developed as a recreational and educational shooting park, designed to also function as a firearms training site for law enforcement.
Development work and operation would be contracted to the private non-profit Pacific Northwest Shooting Park Association.
Sadie Creek is not the shooting park association’s first choice.
The group struggled vainly for 30 years to place a range in Clallam County’s more populous East End. In 1999, it reluctantly agreed to settle for a West End location in the same region as the long-gone range.
Despite utterances of support from then-newly elected county commissioners, a dozen years have passed, with sputters of action occurring mainly at election time.
(District 3 County Commissioner Mike Doherty, D-Port Angeles, is currently seeking his fourth term, challenged by Robin Poole, Republican from Beaver.
(District 1 County Commissioner Steve Tharinger, D-Sequim, is facing Port of Port Angeles Commissioner Jim McEntire, R-Sequim, for an open 24th District state House of Representatives seat.)
Success is not a foregone conclusion for any range proposal, locally or nationally.
Shooting ranges are “increasingly under attack,” reported the September issue of America’s First Freedom, a National Rifle Association monthly publication.
Opponents typically raise noise, environmental, zoning and safety issues, according to the article by environmental law attorney Martha Dean.
All those issues can be successfully resolved if addressed forthrightly, Dean advised, but legal and time costs can be daunting.
Those are the very issues that shot down every serious proposal for a new range site on the North Olympic Peninsula over the past 40 years — and that threaten to block the current outdoor proposals.
Some question using public resources to benefit a small segment of the population.
The same question has been raised regarding Jefferson County’s new equestrian park.
The same could be asked about public golf courses, boat ramps, marinas, swimming pools and ball fields — none of which provides the public safety benefits of a well-executed firearms training venue.
Opponents often claim they don’t object to a range, they just want it appropriately located.
It soon becomes clear that for the most vociferous objectors, there is no appropriate site for a range anywhere on the planet.
Even with three proposals on deck, siting a range is like shooting for the moon.
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Martha Ireland was a Clallam County commissioner from 1996 through 1999 and is the secretary of the Republican Women of Clallam County, among other community endeavors.
Martha and her husband, Dale, live on a Carlsborg-area farm. Her column appears every Friday.
E-mail: irelands@olypen.com.