So, apparently some guys shooting at a public range in Colorado had an impromptu "How Many Of The Four Rules Can You Violate At Once?" contest. The loser got ventilated by the winner and wound up shuffling off his mortal coil and joining the choir invisible.
In a state where rafters, skiers, and snowboarders die like flies on public land every year, the reaction was, perhaps, unsurprising: They closed the range.
This seems odd. We know that the political infrastructure of Colorado is riddled with leftist moles from California, and we would think that they would want to encourage outdoor activities on state lands that were fatal to potential GOP voters, while banning ones that cause hippies to run into trees when they look down to re-light their bong between moguls.
More like leftists from the northeast...
ReplyDeleteTam, you have never been to Rampart, so I'll give you a tour:
ReplyDeleteStart with a hot range filled with folks shooting beer cans after they empty them. Add shot up TVs, whiskey bottles, old computers; I'm afraid to even walk around there without steel toed boots and gloves on. One guy patiently shooting through a chrony, but he gives up after the skeet-from-a-moving-vehicle demonstration starts. Emergency services is 7 miles of washed-out mountain road away.
Most sane people pay $7 to go to Dragonman's, or simply drive into the national forest to one of the dozens of other ad-hoc ranges. But Rampart? No. Rampart is the place where I started carrying a backup self-defense gun during target practice, just to get home alive.
I'm glad to see it closed, and it was the only range within 50 miles of my house.
Ah. One of those ranges...
ReplyDeleteNote to commenters from the original article: The Great Silver Peril does not "leech" from soil under most circumstances. It stays or sinks. Lead is not a particularly active metal, compared to, say, iron, and it doesn't float or become suspended in water with anything short of a flood. That is why it is/was preferred for applications that require resistance to corrosion, such as roofing or water transport.
ReplyDeleteI suggest that anyone who wants to actually learn something about lead transport get his face out of some leftist professor's textbook and go dig a berm at a range. Or perhaps take a tour of a waste water treatment plant, and ask lots of questions. Both activities will certainly prove more informative than the incessant proto-religious monologue with Gaia the Almighty, and men cast as the legion of devils.
On topic: I hate to point this out, but closing a range frequented by That Guy (or should I say Those Guys) isn't going to make anyone safer, because they're just going to go somewhere else. The better solution would have been to build an enormous form around the range during a drive-by skeet competition, then fill it with concrete.
A more serious solution is to place a range on public land under the custodianship of a local club, or ask that one be formed for such purposes. Dump-shooting usually stops when the patrons who brought it are required to clean up every piece of phosphorus coated glass from a ventilated TV set. (I'm not calling them rednecks up here in the Northeast, but sometimes the only way to get 'em to keep their shots on the target is to hang a road sign from the frame.)
and the lefties haven't ruined us yet. we have better gun laws than indiana. and hypnagogue is right, it is one of those ranges.
ReplyDelete"we have better gun laws than indiana."
ReplyDeleteEh, there's not enough difference to really notice, given that one has a toter's permit. Owning a pistol without a toter's permit in Indiana is pointless because of the transport restrictions, but since toter's permits are almost free, require no training courses, and are available at 18, there's no excuse not to have one, and if you have one, you can tote pretty much anyplace anywhen.
"and the lefties haven't ruined us yet. we have better gun laws than indiana."
ReplyDeleteNo, you don't; why would/could you say that? The Bradities rank Red much higher than Indiana (you are nearly twice as worse as we are).
Red is 17th overall, Indiana is 31st.
Shootin' Buddy
And Tam didn't mention that when you get that permit at 18 in Indiana, you can get one that never, ever expires.
ReplyDeleteI've been to Rampart, but I was on a dirtbike so I missed the whole shootin' range thing. There's some great trails up there.
ReplyDeleteshootin' buddy--mostly because the toter permit--but like tam says there is little difference and the brady score is a difference of 8 points (colorado--16 points/indiana 8--the whole "twice as" statement's effectiveness depends upon the numbers) in their kooky rating scheme. And when you look at the detail (their questions about limitations) indiana has more "partials" so i'm not sure why the states are so different. tam's right, the difference isn't really much; lifetime carry permit is good, but toter's permit isn't. so our gun laws are fairly even, but colorado's climate is much better (as a former hoosier i'm qualified to judge).
ReplyDeleteI live in the Springs, and wouldn't shoot at Rampart; too many idiots. Might be different if the place had supervision, but then "those" people would go shoot someplace else anyway. I suspect that's why they don't go to Dragon Man's, they don't like the RO keepin' 'em down. That, and they don't want to pay admission.
ReplyDeleteCome on down here.
ReplyDeleteThe old Atterbury range was a bit of a mess, and I did see the occasional, but rare moment of abject stupidity (one resulting in a very close-call injury, even). Then, they renovated it...
ReplyDeleteYes, it's cleaner. No more bottles and such downrange.
Is it safer? Sure. 20 mins on, 10 mins off, and an RO pacing up and down the line most of the time. No shots from the draw, no rapid fire, et cetera, et cetera. To make it any safer, they would have to disallow firearms on the property. It's an excellent range for slow, careful shots, and nothing else. From my (very) limited experience, an AR shooter gets more of the hairy eyeball than somebody with a deer rifle.
Is it nicer? Hell, no. It's painfully loud. At no other range, even indoor ones, do I need to wear earplugs AND Mickey Mouse Muffs. I don't think I've got particularly sensitive hearing (due to a bit much Metallica through the headphones as a teenager), but the place is just damn loud. Might have something to do with the giant concrete baffles that are set up above and ahead of the firing line.
(I'd like it if they spent as much on some carpet panelling or something as they do on signage warning of the dire consequences of shooting up the wooden support beams. Funny, I thought there was an RO always wandering around...)
Is it more accessible? Well, the 'Old' Atterbury was covered by the DNR budget, free to use by the public. The 'New' one, not so much - and even moreso the second year it was open. I must have missed the 'we're going to jack the price up after the first year' part of the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
While the 'New' Atterbury sports some arguable improvements, I've been there 4 times since the renovation. I doubt I'll be back.
Noah D,
ReplyDeleteI talked about "maximum security shooting" at the new Atterbury here.
Tam,
ReplyDeleteI think I was so frustrated by the Eagle Creek Roulette routine (and I wasn't even there) that I glossed over the rest of that entry.
Yeah, that's on the money, and I'm sorta conflicted about the whole thing.
1) I shot dozens of times at the Old Atterbury, and while I saw 4 Rules violations there, (almost) nothing terribly egregious* ever happened. Sure, it was a mess, but anywhere a nanny isn't looking over their shoulder, someone will toss their crap on the ground and move on without a second thought. Not that that's an excuse; it was still a nasty mess sometimes.
However...
*2) One time at Old Atterbury, one idiot shot someone else (possibly another idiot) across the back of the neck with a 9mm. Cold range, everyone else downrange, idiot was messing with a FTFire by putting a screwdriver up into the trigger works.
All that said, though, I don't like the New Atterbury. It's big, it's beautiful, it's clean, but...maybe it's just my nostalgia for 'it was better back when!' Having recently shot at Wilbur Wright over near New Castle, I'm more and more dissatisfied with the DNR ranges. Maybe it's time to look into ACC, when the money frees up.
"shootin' buddy--mostly because the toter permit--but like tam says there is little difference and the brady score is a difference of 8 points"
ReplyDeleteThe toter permit? You really want to compare Red's concealed toter permit (21, training, inter alia) to Indiana's toter permit (18, no training, lifetime)? Red's going to lose, badly.
I am mystified as to what rational basis that you determine that Red's laws are "better". But, then, as you say, the Brady scores are just plain wierd.
Shootin' Buddy