Bye-Bye, San Gabriel Valley Gun Club....

[Beetle Bailey]

ArmedBear Your range sounds like a great place, and smartly run as well. And I suppose I should go ahead and state that I, a non-member looking in from the outside, wasn't exactly impressed with the manner in which the gun club fought the city.

I know they hired a lawyer and then kept all their plans hush-hush so as not to telegraph their every move. They also banned .50 BMG on the weekends as a concession to the hillside residents. Later they banned .50 BMG completely and closed earlier in order to appease those same residents. Also, they sold T-shirts that said "Save the Range" to try to get people informed. Not exactly the most creative or sophisticated way to get public support. I don't know if they hired a P.R. person or not, but in hindsight they probably should have spent the money on that instead of the lawyer.

Well, I'm stuck without a favorite place to shoot now. Care to give me the name and address of your favorite place? If it isn't too far, I might want to give it a shot (no pun intended). Thanks for caring enough to actually post, BTW.

 

[BamBam-31]

Well, just heard that the range still has one month left before it gets the axe. They'll officially close first week of November (5th?). All lanes will be open til then, not just the 25 they've been limited to this last week. They'll still be closing at 3:30pm, however, although there's no real reason to hold to that limitation either. The original reason for cutting hours was to gain an extension from the city. Obviously, they didn't get it, so why not shoot til dark?

Anyways, it's just a prolonging of the inevitable. Beetle and I will prolly go every Sunday, til the very end. Sad, really....

And we just went to Angeles this last weekend. RO's are still the disrespectful punk a-holes with attitudes I remembered them to be.

 

[Dr. Dickie]

Wow, I really did not want to hear that (sorry that the range is gone guys).
The range I use (Gateway rifle and pistol) is the only range worth going to in my area, and there is a new housing developlment moving in close by. Yes, they are getting people to sign acknowledgement of the range when they buy a house, but it seems that is no deterrent to later pressuring for closeure.
Man, if they shut down...

 

[50 Shooter]

Bam & Beetle,
You know you guys are always welcome to come and shoot with us at ASR when our group is there (3rd Sun. of the month). The plus side is that you get to pay the group rate. ASR has some "nice" RO's but you'll get over them in time. Don't forget to bring that Richard kid also.

We have a 1000 match at Desert Marksman on the 29th if you guys want to come out. The "other" Oct. shoot has been cancelled due to certain things happening in HELL.A. right now. Here's the link to DM if you want to come out on the 29th www.dmrpc.org We should be at ASR on the 15th also for the regular monthly shoot.

 

[BigFatKen]

The membership was "elite" and only available through sponsorship by another member.

The NRA was like this until ~1971`and had one million members more or less. Might have been much less except the GCA of '68 caused a big influx. Many millions now.

http://nra.org/

 

[.38 Special]

And we just went to Angeles this last weekend. RO's are still the disrespectful punk a-holes with attitudes I remembered them to be.

Actually, I notice this is a common trend with gun people in SoCal. It's a lot easier to find "disrespectful A-holes" in the gun world around here than it is to find "nice folks with guns", both at the ranges and at the gun stores.

I have some theories about why this is, but none of them are worth much, probably. The main one comes from my experience that a lot of the a-holes turn into pretty decent folks after they get to know you, but are awfully tired of dealing with idiots/nutcases/"gangstas" so predominant to the SoCal gun scene.

 

[Pilgrim]

Too bad you couldn't convert the lease and turn the place into a hog farm. See if the neighbors prefer hogs to gunfire.

Pilgrim

 

[Beetle Bailey]

You know you guys are always welcome to come and shoot with us at ASR when our group is there

Errr. . . I just saw this right now. Sorry we missed you today, but as long as the gates are open at SGVGC, we want to shoot there as much as possible.

After that, I think it would be great to go to ASR to meet up with you and the rest of the .50 cal shooters. I can hold my nose as far as the range safety officers are concerned, and to be fair, I've actually met three good ones there. Those three were knowledgable, friendly, and actually quicker to deal with potentially dangerous situations than the rude RSO's. I even put in a good word for them to the management, hoping to subtly improve the place. . .

 

[Black Majik]

Posted by: 50 Shooter

Don't forget to bring that Richard kid also.

aww... how thoughtful...

 

[40calpal]

Damn

Well, it would be safe to say that i'm a little late on the subject but i had to find out the hard way that the SGVGC was finally closed. Personally i'm heart broken to see it happen as i basically grew up there. I first started in the real early ninetys as a .22 cal shooter for the NRA sponsered juniors program run by Dorris and big jim and made sharp shooter certification before being persuaded to by a stand-up gentleman by the name of Paul neiderman to see what the world of skeet had to offer. later in the the nineties i started to attend Pauls junior shooting clinics at the range which by the way were absolutely free and he provided the tools too! i remember helping paul load up the range every third saturday with shells he personally bought and set up guns from his own personal collection and loading up the towers with clays. All you had to do was be under 18 and have your parents sign a waiver for you to have a wonerful experience. Paul would donate his time soley for the fact that he wanted to educate. One time, olympian kim rhode shot a round with us and i got to personally hold her gold metal she jut picked up at the atlanta games! What i'm saying is, there were snobs but even they were looked down upon. The range wasn't packed full of red necks like some would say but most, if not all people i met there (and most were affiliated with the club whether they be members or on the list) were pleasant to chat with at the range cafe and were always more than helpful. man, i'd sell my soul just to hear that ass of a range man yellig things at people during a line break because for the most part it was funny to see unsafe people put in their place. the lady at the window was hilarious too because she was a lil hard at hearing and almost never got what you said right lol. lol, I even remember the looks on the target hut employees faces wmen i tried to get my deposit back on a target i blew the legs off of (12 ga plus bird shot). i'm already missing the place....... fun was had and lessons were learned....... i wonder who got to keep the funny "duck x-ing" sign on the duck towers....classic

- John soriano

[email protected]

 

[Scattergun Bob]

BamBam-31

Sorry to hear of your loss,

So many ranges have been closed by conniving and partsan municipalities. It doe not seem fair that development can and does over ride existing property use.

I am afraid that Spokane Rifle Club my local range, established in 1925, will soon join the list of ranges of a previous time. :banghead:

Good Luck to you.

Bob

 

[FCFC]

Sounds like SGVGC had major flaws in its mission and management.

Limited lifespan is a consequence of such organizations.

 

[CRITGIT]

Quote:
Most other people felt like a black traveler walking into a bar in an unfamiliar town, and realizing that he'd stumbled into the local Klan meeting.

Please explain.

This was a racist gun club?

Very good!

CRITGIT

 

[Regolith]

Actually, the ones that I am aware of went a long time ago. And, as BamBam says, the bad attitudes and worse manners didn't have much to do with it.

I don't think ArmedBear meant that the range was closed because of bad management/attitudes, just that it made it EASIER.

In other words, if your range strives to welcome new members and does such things as community outreach, it builds a large number of people who will be willing to defend it should those NIMBY folks and antis try and shut it down, where as a range that is run by snobs and jerks will have far fewer allies in the community at large and be much easier to shut down.

 

[denfoote]

You gun owners in California need to take your state back!!

 

[win71]

Good and Bad

The year was 1963 and my entire family chipped in and gave me a Win. Mod 70, 270 with a Lyman Alaskan 4x scope for Christmas. Bought a box of shells and within a few days went to what we called Fish Canyon (SGVGC I didn't know much about ranges and not wanting to "look" bad I mimicked the other bench shooters. The rifle shot perfect, especially after my eye brow stopped bleeding. Went home and on New Years Eve went to a party and then on to the Rose Parade. During that time the house was burglarized and that was the last time I ever saw that rifle. I left LA and haven't seen the range at Fish Canyon since.
But I do have semi-vivid memories, and the scar to prove it.......

It's a shame when any gun club closes.

 

[CRITGIT]

The democratic process works better in CA than in many other states. The problem is the majority in CA is happy with the status quo as it pertains to guns. Politicians know too well which way the wind blows in CA as it pertains to guns.

The effort should be put toward educating the jury which is the voting public. I know too many folks, many Dem gunners who finally through in the towel because their fellow gunners bashed rather than praised them for trying to fight the good fight. Sometimes we are our worst enemy!

CRITGIT

 

[FCFC]

The problem is the majority in CA is happy with the status quo as it pertains to guns. Politicians know too well which way the wind blows in CA as it pertains to guns.

The effort should be put toward educating the jury which is the voting public. I know too many folks, many Dem gunners who finally through in the towel because their fellow gunners bashed rather than praised them for trying to fight the good fight. Sometimes we are our worst enemy!

Ding, ding, ding! The voters do vote that way...

The pro-gun/gun rights effort could make a lot of hay in CA by appealing to the biggest population segment out there: Hispanics. If the Hispanic demo could somehow be convinced to be pro-gun as much as the Southern demo, things would be a lot different...

Sometimes we are our worst enemy!

Agreed. Sometimes we provide the antis ammo (NPI) when we don't even have to. One (very experienced) poster here, for example, just today, proudly announced his "casual" manner of handling guns, which included misplacing some for weeks at a time. This is the kind of stuff that the lily-livered politicos and the scaredy-cat liberals cling to to maintain their anti positions.

 

[.38 Special]

The trouble with that is that the typical California gun owner is a die-hard Republican, and the typical California Republican is currently in the throes of anti Mexican hysteria.

The bottom line is that SGVGC was closed to due to urban encroachment. I'd been going there for decades and noted the house farms getting closer and closer. It didn't take a genius to see which way the wind was blowing. The fact that SGVGC was often an unpleasant place to shoot was, while accurate, also irrelevant.

 

[sfmittels]

Sad to hear, although I never would have visited it ever again, having left So Cal many years ago. But it brings back fond memories of going there with my dad in the '60s when I was a teenager. He had bought a Jap Arisaka barreled action converted to .30-06, and painstakingly fitted and finished a beautiful walnut stock for it. He bought me my first .22 (a Stevens Model 73), and we would go shooting infrequently. It was one of the few activities my dad and I ever did together. He died in '94, and I turn 60 this year. He never got into firearms, but, later in life, I did in a big way. I still am, and I probably have to credit those shooting sessions as being at least partly responsible. One more memory tanked.