Or a win for the good guys.

Today is the official opening of a new pistol shooting range just out of Auckland. It came about because the Auckland Pistol Club range has all but been shut down due to noise complaints from urban sprawl over the past several years. A former club member bought a block of rural land (100 acres) not likely to be subject to residential development in the next century and set about developing the ranges. He formed a new club and received both Police recognition and range certification. That's when the fun started.

Pistol shooting is an approved recreational activity under the Auckland City District Plan, , as it is under most NZ local authorities, which means it does not require resource consent. Despite this two "neighbours" raised objections to the new ranges on the basis of noise and sought a resource consent hearing so they could object to the activity. One neighbour ended up selling his land, another 200 acre block, to the range owner. The other is the owner/operator of a Meditation Retreat two valleys and about 1 1/2 kilometres away "as the crow flys" who went to the Environment court to have the range halted and lost. (They once petitioned the Fire Sergice to stop fire appliances passing their gate from operating sirens because it effected their tranquility. Go figure)

Last month they took it to the High Court on appeal and were told by the judge that as pistol shooting was an approved activity under the District Plan no recourse consent, notified or otherwise, was required. They then sought an injunction to halt today's official opening on the basis that "shoting might take place" until a decision was made about whether to appeal further could be made (given the (almost) local MP who is opening the range just happens to be both the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Police shooting today is probably a sure thing) only for the judge to be told that the club had been shooting every day for the last 5 weeks on the range and the applicant had no knowledge of the activity. They hadn't heard a thing.

And the beauty of it all is that the meditation centre owners have a mortgage over the property. Under NZ law if they fail to pay costs the mortgagee will be asks to pay and add it to the mortgage.

And the High Court ruling will become applicable for any future hearings anywhere else in the country.

A good day for pistol shooters here.

Congratulations!

Don't you feel a little sorry for the anti-gunners, though? Nah...

Congrats!

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

Congrats on your victory! Since the subject of shooting in New Zealand has been broached, may I ask a follow-up question? My wife and I are considering a vacation in your country. Can you discuss what, if any, opportunities there are for visitors to go shooting? Are there ranges where guns are available to rent? TIA!

Steve

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CHL/NRA Instructor/RSO/Referee

Public shooting ranges are a bit hard to find here. Kiwi's prefer to not have to pay for their sports. They can easily go shooting on private land and get permits for hunting on public land where suitable and it is big money to set up a range for tourists. There was a .22 rifle range in the Far North back in the 90's but I'm not sure it is still in operation. And it was pretty bloody basic anyway.

If you wish to go hunting with rifle or shotgun you can bring your own. I'm not sure what documentation you need at your end but you will require a permit to import coming in, a permit to export leaving and a temporary NZ Firearms licence. All forms should be available at New Zealand Police | Nga Pirihimana O Aotearoa.

You can bring in a pistol if you are a registered competitor in a competition under the same criteria. IPSC, Speed, ISSF and CAS all hold Island and National competitions annually. For details you can e-mail Phil Brown, Pistol NZ Executive Officer, at [email protected] for upcoming dates or PM me and I can access these on the members section of our website Pistol New Zealand, Target Pistol Shooting.

If you are here just on holiday then you will need to be "invited" by a club member to their range to shoot. Getting an invite is dead easy. E-mail Phil, or if in the Lower North Island PM me, and some contact details can be arranged.

Dave Anderson wrote an artical about visiting the Auckland Pistol Club in American Handgunner last year. The links are:

americanhandgunner.com/new-zealand-shooters

americanhandgunner.com/competition-shooting-in-new-zealand

Good to hear about one in the Win column. Sounds like the plan to get away from complaining neighbors didn't go exactly according to plan, but it worked out. You have to wonder how long it really will be until there's more development around the range. That's a classic cause of ranges getting shut down here in CA; when they were built they WERE out in the boonies, and nobody thought that anybody would be building anything close in a hundred years. One range that had been in a park for many decades got shut down because a couple lefties didn't like hearing the noise while they were hiking through the area.


Wow, thanks for cheering me up, there's actually a place that's worse then California to try and bring guns into!

It's like how I feel when I see somebody who weighs like 400 pounds, I can think "Well, at least I'm not that fat."

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TEAM DNF

Thanks for all the info!

Steve

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CHL/NRA Instructor/RSO/Referee

Here in New York State, USA, we have the protection that if a range was there first they can not be shut down because of noise issues. That being said, I suspect it could be changed at any time. Also, all a range needs to get shut down, is one bullet that escapes the range property.
Locally we had one such range, where the back stop was a 50-60' high hill. Some real idiots (but members of the club) put up some targets at the top of that hill. One bullet landed in a guy's windshield of a parked car a few miles away. He called the state police or Sheriff's dept. who went to the range and found those idiots still shooting that way. The range was closed for a long time. When they reopened, they had concrete barriers over and surrounding the entire range arranged in such a way that a bullet couldn't escape. They are now shooting in a tunnel of sorts. I never heard the cost, but I'll bet it was a truly major expense that set them back for years to come. I wonder if the guilty offenders are still members?

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Certified NRA rifle instructor

We have an existing rights rule but it does not always work well.

One example involves urban sprawl where small (2-3 acre) lifestyle blocks on the edge of cities are created from bigger farms. The yuppies that buy them are notorious for making noise complaints about things like farmers feeding stock/milking cows at 7 am on a Sunday morning when they want to lie in.

The best one though was a complaint about a farmers rooster crowing.

And in the city where I used to be based there was a restaurant/night club on the ground floor of a building that was converted into apartments. Noise complaints abounded on a Friday and Saturday nights when bands were playing. No wonder their is no live music scene in that city anymore.

Not wanting to outdo you guys but just to show how far stupidity can go:
I'm member of 2 shooting clubs.The no 2 is a rifle only range.The range is a 235 yds long.There was that neighbour who was aprox 1/2 to 3/4 mile away.from the high backstop and at a safe angle(aprox 60*).He went to court to have the range shut down because the noise made him develop a brains cancer(which he has never been officially diagnosed.BTW he is still living 10 years after).Of course the court rejected his request....after deliberations which took 2 years.In the meantime,nobody was shooting there.
What will the antis think of next!
Qc

Had a situation at a local range where the township rezoned the parcel from agricultural to industrial thus jacking up the tax rate by several hundred percent. Owner fought back and won but as time went by he was denied any permits to make improvements or new construction. He passed away and his daughter tried to maintain the business but kept getting stymied by the local politicians with big visions of a fancy industrial park complex. Finally gave up and sold out. Twenty plus years later that parcel is still empty and generating zero tax revenue. And some consider that progress.

That's a great win!

I'm ecstatic that you all have won and "pushed back" so to speak against the antis in your county.

I'm always amazed people are anti range. I mean they complain that gun owners aren't shooting in a safe, regulated environment, then when we try to manage/maintain/create it, they try to shut it down.

I hope that as a fellow law enforcement officer, you can find they time to go and enjoy the new facility.

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Un-Reconstructed Southerner

We had a similar situation when one of the oldest and best gun clubs in the region, had neighborhoods pop up all around and of course the noise complaints started and moves were made to shut down the range.

Well, the range had been there fore like 50 years, probably more. And it was judged that the people moved into houses near the rifle range so the range would not be shut down.

Out of civility, the club said that if they were given a sufficient parcel of land farther down the highway, they'd move voluntarily.

That was brave of them because I've learned that the last thing you want to do in a civil case is be civil.


This is also one reason that suppressors should be legal at ranges.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Almost certainly, opposition to ranges is based on hoplophobia rather than legitimate health & welfare concerns. I saw one survey where the overwhelming majority of people would rather live next to a prison or a motocross track (think that would raise some dust & noise?) than even an indoor shooting range. Then there's the classic Move Next to an Airport Then Complain About Airplane Noise syndrome, which is another form of mental illness.


The current fad term out here is "no blue sky" ranges, and you can imagine what that means. So the few that managed to stay open have had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to modify/restrict their facilities. One place decided it would be better to cease all shooting activity for renovations that are going to run somewhere between 1 -2 million. Between bickering amongst the members and the permit/appeasement process, it's been down going on two years now with no end in sight.

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TEAM DNF

The general doctrine is referred to, as I recall, as "moving to the nuisance". What this means is that one generally cannot move into an area that has a pre-existing use that disturbs the peace of the person moving to it and then complain of it as a nuisance. I have almost nothing to do with property law, at least of that sort (land use/zoning) so that used up about all I know or might have known.

As for this: "Locally we had one such range, where the back stop was a 50-60' high hill. Some real idiots (but members of the club) put up some targets at the top of that hill. One bullet landed in a guy's windshield of a parked car a few miles away. He called the state police or Sheriff's dept. who went to the range and found those idiots still shooting that way. The range was closed for a long time. When they reopened, they had concrete barriers over and surrounding the entire range arranged in such a way that a bullet couldn't escape. They are now shooting in a tunnel of sorts. I never heard the cost, but I'll bet it was a truly major expense that set them back for years to come. I wonder if the guilty offenders are still members?
*
That's appalling. They are darned lucky if they did not get arrested. I would have found something to file (wouldn't take long) and sought some jail time just to get their attention. If they were allowed to remain members, everyone involved who allowed that needs a large boot in the backside, repeatedly.

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NHI, 10-8.