OUR VIEW: The need to re-open range
The South Rampart Shooting Range might reopen. Someday, that is, if a hefty to-do list somehow is satisfied.
“It’s not going to open in the next few months. Let’s just say it’s a long-term effort,” said Barb Timock, public affairs officer for the Pike and San Isabel National Forest Supervisor’s Office.
Forest Supervisor Bob Leaverton said in late October he would consider re-opening the range if certain conditions were met, which at the moment sound like pie in the sky. Conditions include: substantial range clean-up, infrastructure improvements, and the hiring of a full-time, on-site manager.
The range was closed in July after Otis Freison was killed by a fellow shooter who handled a pistol carelessly. It was the first fatal accident in the range’s 19-year history; hundreds of thousands of people have used it without incident.
U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., is promoting a bill that would help fund more and better public shooting ranges by allocating a greater proportion of the federal Pittman-Robertson funds for recreational shooting. Pittman-Robertson funds are raised by an excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition, and are used mostly for hunter education programs and conservation projects.
“It is my hope that the public lands agencies (ie. the Forest Service) continue to work with the states, sportsmen and hunters, the recreational shooting interests, nearby communities, and others so that these opportunities are safe and available,” Udall said in press release.
Udall seems to understand that guns are an important element of American life, and gun safety involves public access to shooting ranges. The Forest Service has a responsibility to facilitate the needs of recreational shooters, just as it provides for the needs of skiers, bicyclists, campers and hikers. Shooters should work closely with Leaverton and other Forest Service officials to get this range cleaned up, open, and maintained in a manner that’s even safer than before. And maybe, if Udall succeeds, it will have a range nanny to uphold the basic, common-sense rules of gun safety.
