Enfield
That was no problem for Plante when he bought his home three decades ago. Club members used the range periodically, mostly for hunting rifles and archery.
But the use of the range has changed over the years, Plante said. Its operating hours expanded. It now is occasionally used by outside groups for such purposes as teaching armed self-defense. And the club also is pushing to alter the number of people who can shoot on the range at any one time.
“We have a beautiful home and we love our neighborhood, but it has been rendered worthless and unsafe by these people at the range,” Plante, 57, said in an interview at his home last week. “I don’t want anybody to get shot. I don’t want to be drinking their lead, and I don’t want them to be able to grow without some sort of control.”
In January, Plante went to Grafton Superior Court, arguing that the club has violated the town’s zoning ordinance by expanding its use of the 4-acre site and asking the court to order the club to return to the mode of operation that existed before it started to change.
The conflict echoes other disputes with gun ranges in the Upper Valley, including a state-operated range in Hartland — which has drawn noise complaints from Plainfield residents across the Connecticut River — and in Thetford, where neighbors have asked the town to impose some restrictions on a sporting club’s operation of a range on land leased from the town.
The Enfield range began operating about 60 years ago, long before the town adopted zoning. When the town implemented its zoning ordinance, in 1990, the range found itself in a zone designated as residential, with its right to operate grandfathered in. As a non-conforming use of land within its district, the range must receive approval from the planning and zoning boards for improvements that would change its current use.
Enfield Outing Club President David Stewart acknowledges the club has undergone some changes in the last decade or so, including longer hours for firearm use, an increase to 125 members from about 95, and the use of the range by outside groups to teach courses. Both provide additional revenue and stability necessary to the nonprofit club, he said.
But the change in how the range is being used is hardly of the magnitude alleged by Plante, Stewart said.
Using a range to sight hunting rifles is largely a thing of the past, Stewart said. On the other hand, newer clients are interested in self-defense training, which occurs only infrequently at the Enfield Outing Club’s range, he said.
And some of what Plante characterizes as change is, in fact, maintenance, Stewart said. Clay and sand have been added to a berm, for example, to prevent bullets from ricocheting off rocks that have peeked through from erosion.
“We are into preserving and promoting the heritage of American sportsmanship, and a large part of that is firearms,” Stewart said in a telephone interview last week. “We are very responsible people and we are very safety minded. We provide a safe place for people to come and shoot.”
But Dunbar, Plante’s 66-year-old partner, feels anything but safe in her own home because of the increasing number of people using the range at all hours of the day and the use of the range by outside organizations.
The couple’s fear has lead them to deface the front of their home. They removed the windows and front door and replaced them with concrete blocks (covered with siding) out of safety concerns. Now, three front steps lead to nowhere, and disturbed earth lines the front of the home. The two said they hope to build a front deck one day, but when that will happen is unknown.
“Before, I was OK. I felt like I could leave the back door open in the evening and I felt comfortable having my grandchild here,” Dunbar said. “Now, I don’t know who is across the street shooting, and in what direction. I can’t enjoy living in my home. It’s like living in a prison.”
About a year and a half before Plante filed a petition for injunctive relief in Grafton Superior Court, he and Enfield Outing Club members sat through hours of Planning Board and Zoning Board meetings about a proposed revision to the range.
In April 2014, the Enfield Outing Club went to the Planning Board for site plan review of a proposed second range parallel to the existing 100-yard range. The new range would be slightly shorter than the existing one. It would be separated by a bullet-resistant wall and would have a new berm for shooters to fire into, according to minutes of the meeting. The current range allows for as many as 15 people to shoot at one time, Stewart said.
Plante and other Enfield residents objected to the proposal, according to meeting minutes.
After extensive discussion, the Planning Board determined that adding a new range was a conforming use and granted the request at its May 2014 meeting. Plante appealed that ruling to the Zoning Board — and prevailed.
In July 2014, the Zoning Board took up the matter on appeal, and at that meeting, some board members said they felt the proposed second range constituted a change in use — through a physical change to the property — and therefore was considered non-conforming and should require a variance.
After the Zoning Board overruled the Planning Board, the club appealed that ruling in Grafton Superior Court in North Haverhill. That effort was thwarted, however, because the club, which was represented by Evan Nappen, a gun-rights lawyer in Concord, missed a filing deadline.
Planning and Zoning Administrator Scott Osgood said the Enfield Outing Club would need to go back to the Zoning Board for a variance before proceeding with any construction of a second range.
In his eight-page petition to the court seeking an injunction, Plante elaborated on why he believes the club’s expanded use of the property can properly be characterized as “substantial.” The expansion, he argued, includes the “intense commercial use” by outside organizations, including the Massad Ayoob Group, that rent the club’s range, make a profit and require participants to bring their own bullets, hundreds of which are fired into Enfield’s soil. That means non-members and guests now use the facility frequently and at all hours of the day, a drastic change from what went on decades ago, Plante argued. For example, the club used to allow firearm use only on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and some Saturdays; now the range is open for firearm use seven days a week.
The club also has physically expanded its facilities without required variances, including water lines and an update to its berm in late-2000, the lawsuit says.
“The (club’s) current use of the property has had, and will continue to have, a substantially different effect on the neighborhood than the use that existed prior to the adoption of the zoning ordinance in March 1990,” the suit says. “Without a variance, the (club’s) current use of its lot violates the provision of the Enfield zoning ordinance and is unlawful.”
“Mr. Plante, his family and the neighbors are terrified by the new and expanded use(s) of the … property,” and are frightened to go outside, use their properties, or even walk past the facility along Shaker Hill Road, the petition says.
Plante, who is represented by Lebanon lawyer Brad Atwood, has asked that the court order the club to “cease and desist” from all uses that differ from those that existed prior to zoning, and permanently prohibit the club from changing the property’s use in any way without proper permitting.
The club initially responded by seeking to have the case dismissed, arguing that it had dissolved as a nonprofit organization weeks earlier, and therefore Plante’s petition was invalid because it didn’t identify a “legal entity.” According to the New Hampshire Secretary of State’s website, the Enfield Outing Club was dissolved as a nonprofit organization on Jan. 1.
If the club truly is dissolved, state law requires it to stop conducting business, Plante responded in a motion seeking to enforce the club’s dissolution.
Nappen, the club’s attorney, countered by saying Plante misinterpreted the law, and also informed the court that the club intended to become a registered nonprofit again. Plante then demanded the club pay his lawyer’s fees.
“The hypocrisy, duplicity and disingenuousness of (the) respondent’s pleadings merit appropriate sanctions by the court,” Plante wrote.
The court has scheduled a hearing on all pending motions for April 25.
Plante recalls that when he bought his house in 1986, “there was very little going on” at the range. He might see a couple dozen hunters use it in the fall, sighting their rifles and prepping for the hunting season. He enjoyed strolls on Shaker Hill Road and was friendly with some of the club’s members.
How the range was used and the intensity of its use began to change in the early 2000s, he said.
Firearms instructors, for example, used the range to instruct individuals on gun use.
Then, groups such as the Florida-based Massad Ayoob Group began using the range to teach classes. The Massad Ayoob Group teaches a class called Mag 40 that offers, according to its website, an “intense, four-day, 40-hour immersion course” in armed self-defense.
“The course emphasizes legal issues, tactical issues and aftermath management,” according to the website. “Topics will include interacting with suspects, witnesses, responding police officers, threat recognition and mind-set, and the management of the social and psychological aftermath of having to use lethal force in defense of self or others.”
The class costs $800 and requires participants to bring at least 500 rounds of ammunition.
“He comes, he profits and he leaves behind lead in the ground,” Plante said.
From what he has read about the class online, Plante said, it sounds like the group comes to Enfield and “teaches classes about how to kill people efficiently.”
Plante said he has lead in two of the three wells on his property, though he acknowledged there is no way of knowing how that lead got there. He uses the lead-free well for drinking water.
He said he also is bothered that photographs of “attractive young woman” are used for target practice.
When he failed to get a satisfactory response to his complaints from the Selectboard and town manager, he took matters into his own hands, Plante said.
Asked why he doesn’t just retire from his nursing job at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and move to property he has in Florida, he said, “I still need to work because of this. Seventy-five percent of my paycheck goes to my lawyers.”
“It is about principle for us,” Plante said. “Right and wrong.”
Stewart, the outing club president, said outside groups do rent the range via a donation to the club and teach classes to interested community members. It doesn’t happen often, though, Stewart said, and the use of the facility by both members and guests has changed only marginally, pointing to the roughly 25 percent increase in membership over the past decade or so.
“It’s been exaggerated,” Stewart said. Plante “makes it sound like we have these groups coming left and right.”
The Massad Ayoob Group’s four-day class was the only class of its kind to take place at the range last year, he said. The range plays host to such classes, he said, in response to community demand. Just as the higher demand for self-defense classes and the diminished use of the range for rifle sighting reflects changes in how shooting ranges are used these days, so do the types of firearms used, he said.
Increased membership and extra revenue from outside organizations help the club stay afloat, he said.
Stewart said the club tries to be a good steward. Around 2010, safety concerns led the club to build up an existing berm that had gradually been eroding. That work qualified as maintenance, he said, not “expansion,” as Plante has called it.
He said a second range would allow club members to shoot at the same time youth members are firing. Individuals also would be able to shoot from different distances at the same time, too.
Despite concerns from abutters, he said, he was confident the second range wouldn’t double the number of people shooting at one time.
Stewart said the club brought in an expert from Pathways Consulting in 2014 to conduct lead tests. Stewart said the property was found to be clear of environmental issues, such as runoff into nearby waterways.
“We continue to monitor it,” Stewart said.
No plan has been put in place to remove the lead from the berm, though some members do remove their homemade bullets, he said. Club procedures prohibit bullets from being shot over the berm, so the lead is contained, he said.
The club continues to updates its policies and procedures, Stewart said. For example, the club now has a login system, so members know who is visiting the club and when. The bylaws also were updated to allow the Enfield Police Department to use the range for training.
Enfield Police Chief Richard Crate said in an interview last week the department stopped using the range about three years ago because “things were getting too politicized.”
“I view the club as a community resource,” Stewart said. “We provide, at a minimum cost, a place for people to shoot safely.”
Enfield residents have spoken both for and against the club at the meetings held over the last couple of years. Among them is Lindsay Smith, whose home sits about a half-mile from the range. Smith, 41, said her main concern is the shift in the nature of the club from a hunting and sporting range to a facility for outsiders to teach tactical courses.
The club’s recent push to create the second range struck a nerve, she said. She said she noticed the club clearing the land for the second range about three years ago, without going through the proper permitting process.
“They were getting ready to build it and tried to just ignore that they have to get permission,” Smith said. “That is indicative of their general view, which is that they are grandfathered from any sort of community laws.”
She also is concerned about the lead accumulating at the range.
Enfield resident Bill Warren, whose father donated the building the club uses as a meeting space, said he, too, has noticed changes at the range.
A former hunter who is in the construction business, Warren is building in a nearby subdivision. He said he has noticed a change in the type of firearms used at the range.
“The predominate weapon is a handgun,” he said, “which is quite a bit different than when my father and grandfather were involved.”
He said he also can hear more gunfire than he used to.
“There is no question about that,” he added.
Warren, who has attended several of the town meetings regarding the shooting range, said when the range was founded, it was considered “out of town.” Now, with housing sprawl, the range is in a neighborhood.
Smith urged the club to be a better neighbor.
“When the outing club was created, there was nothing around it,” Smith said. “Now that Enfield has grown up, the club is now in the middle of a neighborhood. If they are responsible neighbors, as they claim they are, they would recognize that and find a new spot or change.”
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.