By Anthony Flint, The Boston Globe Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Feb. 20--GEORGETOWN, Mass.--Members of the Georgetown Fish & Game Association have been gathering at the rustic clubhouse at the end of Lake Avenue more than ever lately, but the meetings come and go without a single shot being fired at the club's shooting range. Pistols are holstered and rifles left on gun racks, and instead zoning maps are spread across battered wooden tables.
About two years ago, members of the 54-year-old sporting club joined with area residents to fight a common enemy: a proposed 64-unit condominium complex on an adjacent hill overlooking Pentucket Pond. Club officials feared that the newcomers and the club's shooting ranges wouldn't mix; residents were worried about increased traffic, among other issues.
The unusual alliance, called the Pond Street Association, has already persuaded the developer to reduce the size of the project.
'This would quadruple the number of people in this area,' said sporting club president Bob Gray, who has become schooled in everything from housing policy to wetlands laws as he plunges into the world of land-use planning. He has become active, he said, because 'most towns in eastern Massachusetts haven't done a very good job figuring out where the development should go.'
Gray is not alone.
Across the country, gun owners have become the latest soldiers in the battle against sprawl, determined to protect target, trap, and skeet ranges from encroaching development, and eager to work with residents, environmentalists, and planners with whom they have previously battled.
The National Rifle Association has successfully lobbied in 44 states, including Massachusetts, for range-protection laws that severely limit neighbors' ability to close down pre-existing sporting clubs on the basis of noise complaints. Now it wants to be more proactive, by seeking to prevent development close to shooting ranges in the first place.
'It's the logical next step,' said Jim Wallace, legislative agent for the Gun Owners Action League, a sporting-club advocacy group based in Northborough. Wallace says that the sprawl closing in on sporting clubs across the state is disturbing evidence of a lack of long-range planning. 'The growth has been phenomenal around here over the last 20 years. In the next 20 years there won't be any room for anything.'
Planners and environmentalists say they welcome any group concerned about planning and preserving open space, even if ideological differences on other issues are stark. Farmers and environmentalists who have warred in the past over pesticides and runoff now work together to keep subdivisions and strip malls from rising on agricultural land.
Now, gun and hunting clubs are being recognized as leading protectors of open space. The state Department of Environmental Protection found that sporting clubs ranked behind only the government in terms of controlling undeveloped land. Gun enthusiasts who have historically opposed government intervention are now clamoring for better planning.
It seems that in the battle against sprawl, strange bedfellows abound. And gun groups are wasting no time embracing the themes of the 'smart growth' movement.
Community preservation is a big catch phrase in the smart growth movement -- the safeguarding of homegrown businesses and family farms against the onslaught of ubiquitous big-box strip malls.
Edward George Jr., a Malden attorney who has represented sporting clubs in battles with neighbors, said that gun owners in Massachusetts are probably not devout smart-growth advocates in their hearts. But, he said, encroaching suburban development has been such a wearying issue for many of the not-for-profit clubs for so many years, it's not surprising that some are looking for long-term solutions.
'They will use any excuse to shut them down,' George said of homeowners that border shooting ranges. 'If a buyer sees a home on a Saturday afternoon, buys it, and then discovers on Sunday morning that a gun club is next door, it's easier to go after the gun club than the real estate broker.'
That's what the Maynard Rod and Gun Club discovered several years ago when a subdivision went up next to club property in Sudbury. Residents sued, saying the adjacent range was loud and dangerously close. They prevailed on appeal, but the club still operates, helped in part by a legal maneuver that reclassified it as a nonprofit, educational facility.
Carl Toumayan, an attorney at Kashian & Reynolds in Arlington who represented the Maynard Rod & Gun Club, said gun clubs are forced to be creative. The NRA-sponsored bill passed by the Legislature, which like those in the other 43 states essentially says that noise from a long-established gun club cannot be considered a nuisance, has helped, Toumayan said. But claims are still being made against clubs on zoning or environmental grounds.
Many clubs are trying to acquire more land to create a buffer against development, he said.
The relatively sudden appearance of development in even rural areas prompted the NRA to seek protection of shooting ranges as a component of public lands policy. The NRA joined with the US Forest Service in 1998 to form the Public Lands Shooting Sports roundtable, which includes the Bureau of Land Management. Target shooters are increasingly portraying themselves as responsible stewards of natural areas. Wallace, of the Gun Owners Action League, said the self-preservation motivations of the sporting clubs are obvious. But, he said, target shooters represent a broader constituency than most people realize.
'We're just the litmus test,' he said. 'I've always said, `As the sportsman goes, so goes society.' First you have areas closed to hunting because of sprawl. Now we're all dealing with pollution, water problems, less access to natural areas, overcrowding in schools, trapping wildlife just to get rid of them. Is life better for the average person? You tell me.'
To see more of The Boston Globe, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.boston.com/globe
(c) 2002, The Boston Globe. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
