NRA comes to the rescue of threatened gun ranges.

Josey1

NRA comes to the rescue of threatened gun ranges. Submitted on: January 23, 2002 Taken from Tuesday Jan 22nd's Wall Street Journal.Shooting Ranges Gain Special Protections Thanks to Gun LobbyNRA's Stealth Campaign Leaves Jangled Neighbors With No Legal RecourseSen. O'Connor's Secret PlanBy Joseph T. HALLINANStaff Reporter of TFIE WALI. STREET JournalThe tranquility of country life ended for Leroy Clayton when a shooting range opened in 1998 on the farm next to his in eastern Georgia. "Sounds like Afghanistan," Mr. Clayton says. But when the 66-year-old barber tried taking the range to court-arguing that the noise rendered his farm unliveable he made a startling discovery: The Georgia Legislature had recently passed a law shielding shooting ranges from noise related litigation. And the push to do so had come from the headquarters of the National Rifle Association.It is rare for any industry to receive such sweeping legislative protection fromcivil litigation.But since 1994, the NRA has gone from state to state waging an extraordinary and little noticed campaign to win broad safegaurds for the shooting range industry.In seven years, the number of states adopting these laws has surged to 44 from eight. Now the NRA vows to focus on the six remaining states: Delaware, Hawaii, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nebraska and Washington.The NRA effort has attracted little attention because in many states, sponsoring legislators have used parliamentary stealth to get bills passed. In Kansas, forinstance, State Sen. Kay O'Connor quietly tacked a range-protection amendmenton to a seemingly unrelated measure so late in the legislative process that public debate on the amendment was effectively precluded. Her plan was so secret, she says, "I didn't even tell my husband."The NRA is unapologetic. In many cases, "ranges were being shut down for no reason other than people just didn't like them," says Randy Kozuch, the NRA's director of state and local affairs. "We saw this happening in an alarming number of states."Asked to provide an example of a range forced to close, Mr. Kozuch says he can't think of any. The National Association of Shooting Ranges, in Newtown, Conn., doesn't track the number of ranges in the U.S., but the trade group's chief executive, Bob Delfay, says the figure appears to be rising rather than falling. In the last five years-the same period during which legislatures have beengranting the industry protection the number of inquiries to the associationfrom parties interested in building new shooting ranges has quadrupled, to roughly 1,200 a year, Mr. Delfay says.Still, in the mid-1990s, the NRA intensified its state-level lobbying for range-protection laws, pumping money into state political races. "I made that one of my biggest priorities," Mr. Kozuch says.Potent LobbyThe NRA, with four million members nationwide and deep reservoirs of cashfor campaign contributions, has long been considered one of the most potentlobbying organizations in American politics. But its influence in Washington appeared to wane during the Clinton administration, as a number of highly publicized school shootings damped public support for the organization's pro-gunagenda. In the late 1990s, a number of cities filed lawsuits against firearm manufacturers, seeking to hold them liable for the public costs of gun violence.During this time, the NRA redoubled its efforts in state capitals, contributing large sums to candidates for state office. http://www.mcrgo.org/news_story.asp?key=740