Franktown Cafe

Will progress and development ruin shooting in the hills? Washoe County commissioners banned shooting in 37 square miles of the north valleys area at the request of some homeowners. As Washoe county oozes from rural to suburban, more people means we are geting a little too close to each other to continue some of the old ways. One is the hobby of going out in the sagebrush and shooting anything and everything with whatever gun you have. One at a time, houses are creeping up the hills all around Washoe Valley and what looks like public land may not be. There are large parcels all around that are undeveloped and private but the public has had access as it looks like and is right next to BLM land.
Not only is land disapearing but the ever increasing population is going out in the hills to hike, hunt, shoot, ride, drive and who knows what else.

With a lot of activites, including shooting, it is the shooters themselves that tend to ruin for themselves. We’ve run across kids shooting from hilltops and another neighbor says he ran across a guy pretending to be ? James Bond? jumping around with a pistol firing in all directions. It is common to hear accounts of windows, barns, powerlines and livestock hit with gunfire.

Rather than attacking people who fear guns and the people that love them, the gun hobby establishment should be going after its own members and insisting on education, training and limiting gun use to responsible citizens- which is what I think the founding fathers had in mind anyway.