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More Opposed
W. B. Weaver said he opposed a rifle range anywhere in Rappahannock and Rose Bowey, another next-door neighbor of Blue Ridge Guns, said that the county will no longer be a peaceful, tranquil place to live if a shooting range is allowed.
Gladys Havstad told the commissioners that a rifle range will generate additional traffic, noting that the Bowers will need a lot of customers in order to make the venture profitable.
"A gun range is not an agriculturally related purpose...It’s really a commercial use,” said Alvin Henry, maintaining that the proper way to proceed would be for Bowers to find a commercial area for his range. (Under current ordinances, a shooting range is not allowed either by permit or by right in an industrial or general business-commercial zone.)
Henry said that last year, while working on a farm two miles away from Clark Brothers’ shooting range, he could hear the firing “just as plain as day.” The presence of a range will lower property values, he said, expressing concern over the effect of the noise on livestock, particularly dairy cattle.
“It’s not possible, with high powered rifles, to have 100 percent safety within one mile (of a rifle range),” maintained Phil Irwin. A range is “totally inappropriate anywhere in Rappahannock County,” he said, sparking a round of applause from the audience.
"Next year, in order for you to obtain a hunting license, you will have to pass a safety course and qualify with a weapon," Bowers predicted, noting that such a law was recently adopted by Florida and is currently under consideration by the Virginia Game Commission which will work for its adoption here in 1984.
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