GOUtah!

Dear SL County Mayor, SL County Council, and others involved in the SL County Parks and Recreation Master Plan:

I’m writing to comment on the Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation Master Plan. I find it astonishing that the Plan includes no mention of public shooting ranges. As time goes on, two things are certain to happen in Salt Lake County: The population (and hence the number of people with guns) will increase, and the few remaining open spaces suitable for outdoor shooting ranges will disappear.

Utah has one of the highest rates of private gun ownership in the nation, and over 50% of all households in the state legally possess at least one firearm for hunting, recreational shooting, self-defense, or a combination of the above. Many of these households have multiple guns. Roughly 47% of Utah’s population lives in Salt Lake County. Hence, we may reasonably conclude that approximately 500,000 people in this county -- young and old -- have household access to at least one firearm.

These half-million residents are in need of safe, legal places where they can practice with their firearms and enjoy the shooting sports. Nationwide, approximately 17 million Americans participate in the shooting sports annually, which puts shooting somewhere between tennis and golf in terms of popularity.

The shooting sports are a lifetime activity that can be safely enjoyed by young people and old people alike. In the words of Thomas Jefferson: "A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun, therefore, be the constant companion of your walks." (Letter to Peter Carr, 1785. ME 5:85, Papers 8:407)

Furthermore, a study done a few years ago by the U.S. Department of Justice indicates that young people who are legally and properly introduced to marksmanship by an adult (such as a parent, adult friend, professional firearms instructor, scoutmaster, etc.) are much less likely to engage in crime than are young people who get introduced to guns "on the street" by their youthful peers, or even young people who have never been exposed to guns at all. In addition, teenagers who are properly introduced to safe shooting practices are much less likely to be involved in gun accidents. Finally, it’s worth noting that good marksmanship requires patience and self-control, the results of which can be very rewarding. This is why teenagers who develop good marksmanship are more likely to develop these other virtues. Given that Salt Lake County has more teenagers per capita than most places in the United States, the need for adequate shooting ranges becomes even more apparent.

Salt Lake County has spent sizable sums of taxpayer money building or buying multiple golf courses, helping the greater Salt Lake metropolitan area to achieve its current status of having more golf courses per capita than any other metro area in the nation. Given that a shooting range requires less land than a golf course, is less expensive to maintain, and can be built on land that might not be suitable for a golf course, I find it strange that the County operates no public ranges and has no plans to do so in the future. The only shooting facility currently operated by Salt Lake County is the Sheriff’s range, which is completely off limits to the public.

Sheriff’s deputies aren’t the only people in the Salt Lake area who need a shooting range. Deer hunters need a place to sight in their long-range rifles and to obtain realistic practice via the exciting sport of metallic silhouette shooting. People who have concealed-firearm permits, or who simply keep a handgun at home for personal defense, need a place where they can practice safe gun-handling and defensive marksmanship. And, of course, many gun owners love to engage in various shooting sports for recreation, running the gamut from trap and skeet to formal bull’s-eye target shooting to simply knocking down tin cans.

The Salt Lake Valley is now, for all practical purposes, almost entirely urban and suburban. The open fields with embankments where a father used to be able to teach his kids to shoot a .22-caliber rifle simply don’t exist anymore, and, in any event, county ordinances now make it illegal to shoot in such places. The only option for Salt Lake County residents, other than a long drive to a rural area in some other part of the state, is to visit one of the relatively few formally designated shooting ranges within the county.

Two indoor ranges in the county are open to the general public, but these can offer only a very limited variety of shooting activities. Only one outdoor range, the state-operated Lee Kay Center, is fully open to the general public. While Lee-Kay caters to a considerable variety of shooting activities, realistic self-defense practice (such as drawing from a holster or engaging in rapid-fire pistol competition) is prohibited, as is metallic silhouette shooting, which is the best way to simulate hunting.

The private Holladay Gun Club is partially open to the public, but is being threatened by development and might not last much longer. Once it’s gone, there will be no publicly-accessible gun ranges in the entire eastern half of Salt Lake Valley. The rifle range at the Hendrickson facility in Parley’s Canyon is open to the general public, but the pistol range is not.

About half a dozen other gun ranges exist within the county limits, but these are reserved exclusively for use by various government agencies and/or private clubs.

As a grassroots organization representing the self-defense and shooting-sports interests of Utahns, GOUtah! considers it imperative that additional shooting ranges be made available to the general public. A county-owned outdoor range, unlike a private facility, can be effectively protected from getting paved over by developers as the population grows and land becomes scarce. There are still a few pieces of land suitable for outdoor ranges, but these will disappear soon unless the Parks and Recreation Department takes action.

Salt Lake County has spent large sums of taxpayer money on golf courses, tennis courts, soccer fields, baseball diamonds, physical fitness centers, a zoo, and various other recreational facilities. Do you really think it’s appropriate for the County to have no public shooting ranges in its Master Plan?

GOUtah! urges the SL County Mayor, County Council Members, and others responsible for the Parks and Recreation Master Plan to correct this deficiency in the plan and provide for public schooting ranges. We believe there would be both social and economic benefits to combining both private citizen and police use of the same ranges and urge you to open existing police ranges to greater public use as well as planning for and building public ranges.

I thank you in advance for taking the time to respond to me and letting me know your position on these issues so that we may let our members in SL County know where their elected officials stand and what they plan to do to correct this situation.

Sincerely,

Charles Hardy
GOUtah!