Cali residents take aim at property rights, gun club


iconIn typical California liberal style, suburbanites are sprawling out into the country and then complaining about the country folk that were there first. In Azuza, California residents are trying to run a gun club out of town; a club that's been there since 1946.

Michael Battaglia, a spokesman for Mountain Cove builder Standard Homes, said buyers were warned about the gun range, which leases its land from Vulcan Materials.

Coats said he saw those warnings but times have changed and the club should get out because so many homes are within earshot.

Coats made a conscious decision to purchase real estate near a gun club. Now he figures he can use mob rule to run the gun club out of town, under the false sense of legitimacy called democracy. It being California, where the liberal droogs always get their way as long as they can muster enough votes, it looks like the dark side is going to succeed.
Many of Coats' neighbors and the city's mayor say it is time for the 530-member club to move somewhere else because there are many new homes in the canyons affected by it.

"I don't like it," said resident Jane Galvan.

"We would support them going away," said resident Dianne Mallon.

Azusa Mayor Cristina Madrid said the council is going to see about getting the lease terminated.

"For a million years there were not a lot of residents up there. We'd like to terminate the lease of the gun club. We just haven't defined a clear path to do that," Madrid said.

"Defined a clear path" is politician-speak for 'finding a quasi-legal way to violate their rights'. That the gun club is leasing will probably make it easier for the Mayor to run them out. Put enough pressure on the landlord and they are bound to cooperate (unless they are a member of the club or something.) But even if the gun club owned the property it would still be pretty easy. Local governments seize land from property owners in the name of imminent domain all the time. All they have to do is justify the seizure by claiming the community is better served through higher tax revenues by seizing the land and turning it over to property developers. One could easily argue that seizing land from a bunch of gun nuts and building upscale cluster homes on the property would bring in much more tax revenue. I try to remain optimistic, but I still think their days are numbered.


Comments

Those people run off farmers (whose family farmed the land for generations before the outsiders came int) and spend my tax money on sound barriers at airports because they don't like the noise. Hu? If you don't like it, don't build there!

But of course in this case they can just say guns=bad, must get that place out of here.

Posted by: bogie at April 5, 2004 9:15 AM

For your information many of the people in that community in Azusa are REPUBLICANS, even own guns themselves. The fact is that the residents were mis-represented by the media. No one explicitly stated they wanted the gun club to be moved except the Mayor. The vast majority of the residents just want some type of restriction on when and how much they can shoot during the days, especially Sundays and the caliber of weapons (no fully automatic, etc.). The gun club was started in the late 40's but apparently ITS LOS ANGELES and its grown a little there. Imagine having a full outdoor gun range operating 50 hours per week within miles of thousands of residents. The other issues related are the san gabriel river which runs a few hundred feet from the gun range. there are concerns over how people can enjoy one of LA's last remaining natural resources with that constant noise going on as well as the lead run-off from spent bullets - this effects any visitor to the River - of which there are many. No one knows if they ever spent money to fix any lead issues there. so , think before you rant in the future. What about the people/land owners there before the gun club - the orchard farmers who grew oranges in that valley. And, what about YOUR house - you can't deny there was something displaced to make way for your home. You people think inside a box.

Posted by: Frank Tamer at April 23, 2004 4:28 PM

Frank,

First of all, Republicans in California are commonly known as Democrats in the rest of the world. That the Mayor is the only one who has gone on record as saying they're planning to force the gun club out, is not very comforting. Not to mention that the Mayor is a public servant and usually has the power to make things like that happen.

You're also very quick to put restrictions on what private people do on private land. (Private means land that is NOT yours.) You suggest restrictions on specific calibers for no particular reason. Why is .30 caliber more tolerable than .45? You suggest making it illegal to shoot on Sundays, again with no apparent reason. What is so special about Sunday? (You'd better not bring religion into it, this is government we're talking about and we wouldn't want to mix the two.) You also give no reason why full auto fire should be prohibited, nor do you cite any evidence of adverse environmental conditions (outside of "noise"). Instead you advocate using the threat of lethal force to limit someone else's rights.

You also throw a few red herrings in there about people enjoying the environment, and everyone's home displacing something else. None of this is relevant. You should not expect people to change their behavior, just because you choose to try to enjoy the environment in close proximity. If they move further down the road, what's to keep you from driving down there and doing the same thing again. There is plenty of environment out there; if the noise bothers you, go enjoy it some place else.

Also, this gun club nor my home hasn't displaced anyone. This is private land that is privately owned. I presume it was gotten legally, and not stolen from anyone. At least, nobody appears to be laying claim to the title. I didn't kick anyone out of their home so that I can enjoy this piece of property, and neither did the gun club. If people were growing oranges there at one time, in all likelihood they left their voluntarily. Nobody appears to be disputing that the property is not being rented legally on the free market.

Look, if you want to make the owner a tender offer to buy the land and kick the gun club out, than so be it. That is your right. But don't use the mob rule and the police power of the government to get your wishes. That kind of logic has been used throughout time to keep minorities from moving into neighborhoods. Trying to control what people do on their own land is just plain wrong, no matter how many people vote in favor of it.

Posted by: Ravenwood at April 23, 2004 5:57 PM

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