A Chickamauga audience was overwhelmingly against a proposal tonight to build an outdoor shooting range across the street from a daycare center.
The Chickamauga Planning Commission agreed and voted unanimously against rezoning the property. The commission's vote is only advisory; the matter goes before City Council at its May 7 meeting.
Paul Chapman had proposed the range behind a metal-sided building at 1568 LaFayette Road. Academy for Little People daycare sits across the road.
Chapman wants to lease the space for his 10-employee ammunition manufacturing business, North Georgia Firearms & Ammunition, which has outgrown its space in Fort Oglethorpe.
"I am not here to diminish anybody's business," he said, referring to the daycare's opposition.
He said the shooting range would be surrounded by a berm and sturdy railroad ties would prevent stray bullets.
For complete details, see tomorrow’s Times Free Press.
Tim Omarzu covers Catoosa and Walker counties for the Times Free Press. Omarzu is a longtime journalist who has worked as a reporter and editor at daily and weekly newspapers in Michigan, Nevada and California. Stories he's covered include crime in blighted parts of metro Detroit and Reno, Nev.; environmental activists tree-sitting in California's Sierra Nevada foothills; attempts by the Michigan Militia to take over a township¹s government in northern Michigan. A native of Michigan, ...
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This isn't a gun rights issue, so don't launch out on the Second Amendment religious teachings. This is a public safety issue, and public health issue, and a property rights issue.
While stray bullets may--and are likely to-- roar out of this range, it is certain that noise and toxic lead will be a result if this business gets approval for an outdoor shooting range. The city will likely have lead in it's sewage sludge and lead in the creek flowing to the federal park, which will shut the place down. Then the owner and city will have a very expensive toxic lead cleanup problem, and be poisoning children and people.
Read about how toxic lead from shooting is--download the report Poisonous Pastime. Other's toxics on your land is something they can't escape in a lawsuit. Cleaning up shooting ranges or even their runoff has driven folks broke before. Children deserve more respect.
The NRA zealots snookered the legislature into violating our property rights by blocking any of us from suing over noise from shooting ranges--say what? That supersonic crack from rifle rounds is ok? What about our property rights? We can tell the city council we don't want the town to sound like Afghanistan. And people from all over will have the federal government telling the city that the national battlefield deserves more reverence than this. Take it on down the road, where it is welcomed, if there is such a place. Going from five to ten employees or even 20 does't compensate for what will be lost if this happens.
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