We've previously asked everyone to lock the gate on entering and leaving due to suspected trespassers and vandalism. The trespassers are getting bolder. A couple weeks ago, a car cruised up and down Eble Road, pulling in behind members at the gate, telling the RB member to go on in, and they (the trespassers) would close the gate. It took them two tries, but eventually someone allowed the car to follow them in.
When it was time to leave, our trespassers approached another shooter asking to be let out, on the pretext that they had forgotten their membership cards. The member refused to let them out. Things escalated as the trespassers refused to give their name or show any ID. Ultimately, Mike Maurer was called, and the decision was made to open the gate and let them go after getting their license number and description of the car, lest the situation escalate any further.
Mike contacted the sheriff and filed a trespassing complaint, but the license plate (written down independently by two members) came back as not valid (whatever that means).
So in the future, if someone you don't know wants to follow you into the range, ask to see his/her membership card. And if someone asks to see your card, please don't take it personally. And if you don't have your membership card, then don't plan on getting into the range. We don't all know each other, and it's for our mutual good that we only allow members and invited guests past the gate. Finally, as always, lock the gate on your way in or out.
The 12th Annual Clay Classic hosted by the SW Indiana Friends of NRA (you know, the people who foot the bill for the YouthFest) will be held Saturday, May 10, 2008 at Evansville Gun Club in Haubstadt. We are starting at 9:00am and you may shoot either trap or 5-stand (a scaled down version of sporting clays).
All levels of shotgun shooters may participate, as we use Lewis Class scoring to award trophies to those finishing in the top of each third of the entries. A $50 registration fee covers a 100-target entry, barbeque lunch, and bidder registration for the firearms estate auction held after the event. $25 registration covers a 50-target entry and lunch. $10 covers lunch and bidder registration for non-shooters. Five-man teams may enter for $275 (and compete for a traveling team trophy). Doorprizes are awarded as well.
An estate auction
(30+ firearms) will be held after the event (about 3:00pm), with a portion
of the proceeds donated to Friends of NRA.
Look around at the presidential candidates’ “support” for your Second Amendment rights, and then come join us having fun to raise funds to educate kids and their families about safe gun handling, and why we do what we do. Attendance here counts toward our annual banquet attendance as well, so please, help us out!
Photos and other details may be found here.
The NRA Annual Meeting will be held in Louisville, KY this year from May 14-18. As always the NRA depends on area gun clubs to help out with volunteers in several capacities. They need about 275 volunteers altogether. Information regarding volunteer duties and an application may be found at this link.
Over the last couple of years, the Board has seen the utility of being able to do mass emailings to our membership. We try not to abuse the privilege of having access to some of our members email addresses. Over the last 2 years, I think we've sent out 5 emails, but each had to do with the unexpected closing of the range or cancelation of the membership meeting due to having no power at the clubhouse. The most recent was last week when it was announced by Alcoa on Wednesday that they wanted to do an environmental survey of the range on Friday AM for two hours. When things move this fast, there is no time for an [expensive] notification by U.S. mail, and we can't phone 600 members with this info. Nor do we want to risk your wrath when some of you drive up to an hour or two to get to the range and find it closed.
The problem is that we only have the email addresses of those who have chosen to have the club newsletter delivered electronically (about a third of our membership). For those who still want a hardcopy newsletter, but who want to be on our urgent notification email list, please click this link and send an email to MailList@redbrush.org, with "SUBSCRIBE RB-Alerts" as the subject, and this will put you on our emergency alert email list. Make sure you send this from the address where you want to receive any urgent emails (or send it once from work and once from home if you want alerts delivered to both addresses).
Again, there is no need to do this if you are already on our Newsletter list. If you do, you'll receive duplicate copies of any urgent emails, as we will send them to both the Newsletter list as well as the RB-Alerts list. And if you do want to get the newsletter by email, and save us a bunch on mailing costs, go to this link.
The Board has repeatedly heard from numerous members that they are arriving at the range to find no one there and the gate wide open. In one case, in the course of a conversation with a fellow shooter (on the line shooting) our member learned the shooter was not a member, but just driving by and saw the gate was open, so came on in to use the range.
And perhaps (hopefully) related to this, the board is aware of increased vandalism at the range, with bullet holes found in chair backs, chair seats, the telephone box on the Pistol Bay 1, our small square tables, one of our IPSC barricades (accidentally left on the range), not to mention the outside wall of the men's restroom. None of these items are targets, but someone has shot them. Since all our members know that intentional destruction of range property is grounds for having their membership permanently revoked (right?), then surely these vandals must be non-club members coming in through a gate left open by club members.
The board has asked that unless a formal shooting event is underway, please lock the gate as you enter and leave since we seem to have an increasing number of strangers just wandering in while the gate is open. For all we know, they are the ones not locking the gate on the way out since they don't know the lock combination. And surely none of you would be guilty of being the last one out and not locking up, right? Right? That's what we thought.
A Safe Place to Shoot
