ZBA sights in on shooting range

Yesterday the McHenry County Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) conducted an all-afternoon hearing on the application for a shooting range at the site of the former miniature golf and driving range on Route 120 at Queen Anne Road, northeast of Woodstock.

The owner of Marengo Gun and Coin, Dominick LeBock, and his lawyer were there to present their plans and to request approval for his project, which is to include a shotgun range, a pistol range, archery range, paintball course and the existing miniature golf range. It's still not clear to me if there will be a rifle range. Reference was made to calibers not larger than a .50 cal. pistol. Will the facility permit .50 cal. rifles?

The safety issues were pretty well defined, with the range design expected to control all intended and stray shots.

The noise question was another issue. There were audible chuckles from some members of the audience when testimony was given that the sound of a shotgun's being fired was not so loud as a passing car and that the sound of six shots fired at the proposed range could not be heard by the microphone of a video camera at distances from the proposed range of 3,289, 4,905 and 2,439 feet.

One board member attempted to calculate the number of shotgun and pistol rounds that might be fired by totaling up the maximum number of shooters and the number of rounds each shooter might fire.

To me that was sort of like counting the number of bricks in the streets around the Woodstock Square. So what? The range will not be in use by the maximum number of shooters every hour during the 12 hours of daily operation, 8AM-8PM. But there will certainly be peak shooting periods. Will that corner then sound like you are in Kabul?

The McHenry County Planning Dept. staff member and the project's attorney frequently mentioned the "standards" of the National Rifle Association for shooting ranges. One member of the audience had an NRA range bulletin, and it stated that there aren't any NRA standards. Hopefully, he will send me the link to that bulletin or quote the NRA's disclaimer himself.

The hearing was suspended as the clock approached 4:30PM, and the hearing will resume on Thursday, April 26, at 1:30PM at 667 Ware Road, the County's Administration Building.

A shooting range anywhere in McHenry County will affect somebody. The huge housing project that was proposed for diagonally across the intersection before the building bubble burst was not mentioned. Nor was the Lutheran School that had been proposed on Route 120, west of Queen Anne Road. This range is proposed within earshot of civilization and is, in my opinion, better suited on ground much farther west of Woodstock, not in its proposed location.

An armed, uniformed deputy of the McHenry County Sheriff's Department was present throughout the hearing. Because he sat in the back of the room, his role was not entirely clear to me. Was he there because an expected rowdiness or threat from the mostly-mature group of concerned citizens? Or was he there on behalf of law enforcement and the issue of guns?

I didn't approach him to ask - most MCSD deputies keep their distance from me, but I did ask the Board why he was there. They didn't know, so apparently he was not there by invitation. The audience generally ignored him, and he asked no questions.

This public hearing was a function of government and citizens. What law enforcement purpose was served by his being there all afternoon, instead of out patrolling. Certainly, he would not have been there on his own. He had to have been directed there by a superior at MCSD.