Howell Gun Club President Rick Howard teaches Travis Bowers, 16, how to shoot skeet. The proposed bill stems from a Livingston County ruling that ordered Island Lake gun range to comply with Green Oak Township's 65 decibel noise ordinance.Proposal may save gun ranges
If bill is approved, state shooting facilities will be excused from local noise ordinances.
"I'm glad there's a range around where I can shoot," says Adam Boes, 16, at Howell Gun Club.Error processing SSI file
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GREEN OAK TOWNSHIP -- Jenness Wiegand doesn't think it is right for a state senator to introduce a bill that will exempt gun ranges from local noise ordinances.
"This bill would totally take our rights away from our properties," said Wiegand, a township resident who has been fighting to silence a state-run gun range in the Island Lake Recreation Area near her home.
"It's totally wrong to exempt any kind of business like that. We all have to follow local ordinances, but I guess people who shoot guns wouldn't."
State Sen. Gerald Van Woerkom, R-North Shores, recently introduced a bill that would exempt shooting ranges throughout the state from local noise ordinance restrictions. Van Woerkom, who represents residents in Newaygo, Oceana, Muskegon and Mason counties, said the bill came about after he was approached by shooting enthusiasts in his district.
"I had some shooters come to me concerned about a ruling where a judge, in effect, pretty much closed the shooting range," he said. "They were concerned that their shooting ranges would be shut down because of the noise ordinances."
The proposed bill stems from the fight between residents in Green Oak and Brighton townships near Island Lake Recreation Area. In June, Livingston County 44th Circuit Judge Daniel Burress ordered the state-run range to comply with Green Oak Township's 65-decibel noise ordinance.
In November, Burress said he witnessed a "callous disregard" by the state and ordered the range shut down for violating the ordinance pending a trial. But the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned Burress' ruling a few weeks later, allowing the range to reopen.
A trial date is set for September in Livingston County.
The proposed bill has the support of sporting groups including the National Rifle Association and the Michigan United Conservation Clubs -- an organization that boasts 500 sporting and shooting clubs as members.
Geo Fuhst grew up in Commerce Township within a mile of the Multi-Lakes Conservation Association. That facility opened in 1942 and offers outdoor pistol, rifle, trap and clay shooting. And the gunshots Fuhst heard were the sounds of capitalism, he said.
"The range didn't bother me at all. It was the sound of people earning a living," said Fuhst, 54. "This looks like a good common-sense type of law. We need these ranges."
His statements echo that of the NRA's.
"Island Lake is a state of the art shooting range and serves a valuable service to the community by providing firearm training and recreation opportunities," said Kelly Hobbs, NRA spokeswoman. "Protecting all safely operated ranges, like Island Lake, is in the best interest of the general public."
Van Woerkom, the chairman of the Michigan Senate's Agriculture, Forestry and Tourism Committee, sees it more as an issue of urban sprawl. He said the issue over gun ranges is similar to one farmers faced years ago when new residents filed suit against farmers to stop noise, odor and farming expansion. The 1981 Right to Farm Act limited farmers from lawsuits. A 1999 Senate bill strengthened the act by prohibiting local governments from enacting or enforcing ordinances that conflict with farming.
"A lot of these shooting ranges have been there a long time and I don't want to put them at risk because they're being encroached by neighbors," Van Woerkom said.
"We know that gun ranges provide important recreation activities in the state," added Donna Stine, spokeswoman for the Michigan United Conservation Clubs. "As suburbia catches up with our conservation clubs, there's more and more pressure for them not to exist."
There are 138 shooting ranges in Michigan listed on an NRA Web site, but Stine said her organization estimates the number ranges at closer to 400.
Some have been around for decades, others, like the Island Lake range, have not. The Island Lake range opened in 2001.
"We were all here first," said Wiegand, referring to her family and to neighbors in the area. Wiegand moved with her husband to their 15-acre parcel in 1991.
Green Oak Township Supervisor Mark St. Charles said Van Woerkom's bill could affect their court case.
"This whole issue of a senator introducing a bill regarding a shooting range in somebody else's district is highly suspect," St. Charles said. "This is nothing more than an attempt to take the rights away from residents in our area."
And no one from the state or the DNR has contacted township officials to work out a resolution, St. Charles said.
"We have been working for two and a half years to resolve this without more litigation," St. Charles said. "The state and the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) are being bad neighbors."
On Tuesday, a group of students practiced trap shooting at Howell Gun Club -- another Livingston County shooting range and organization. The students fired hundreds of rounds from shotguns past 8 p.m., illuminated by the range's overhead floodlights.
"I love being out here and being able to shoot," said Adam Boes, a 16-year-old Brighton High School sophomore who just finished a round of trap shooting, hitting 23 out of 25 targets. "I'm glad there's a range around where I can shoot like this."
You can reach Steve Pardo at (517) 552-5503 or spardo@detnews.com.
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