A SUPREME COURT RULES: Shoot in Backyard?

[bogey1]

Your thoughts? Mine is mind your own damn business. .gov is going too far with this one.

[JoshIronshaft]

A news article on this:

https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news...nd%20Amendment.

Pennsylvania's high court sides with township over its ban of a backyard gun range
Jonathan Barris had challenged Stroud Township's gun laws
By Mark Scolforo • Published February 22, 2024 • Updated on February 22, 2024 at 7:40 am

What to Know
Pennsylvania's Supreme Court says a township ordinance that limits firing guns to indoor and outdoor shooting ranges and zoning that significantly restricts where the ranges can be located do not violate the Second Amendment.
The justices ruled Feb. 21, 2024, for Stroud Township and against Jonathan Barris, who challenged the gun restrictions. Barris drew complaints from neighbors after building a gun range on his property in the Poconos.
In 2011, the township adopted an ordinance restricting gunfire to indoor and outdoor gun ranges, as long as they were issued zoning and occupancy permits.
A township ordinance that limits firing guns to indoor and outdoor shooting ranges and zoning that significantly restricts where the ranges can be located does not violate the Second Amendment, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The man who challenged Stroud Township's gun laws, Jonathan Barris, began to draw complaints about a year after he moved to the home in the Poconos in 2009 and installed a shooting range on his 5-acre property. An officer responding to a complaint said the range had a safe backstop but the targets were in line with a large box store in a nearby shopping center.

In response to neighbors' concerns, the Stroud Township Board of Supervisors in late 2011 passed what the courts described as a “discharge ordinance," restricting gunfire to indoor and outdoor gun ranges, as long as they were issued zoning and occupancy permits. It also said guns couldn't be fired between dusk and dawn or within 150 feet of an occupied structure — with exceptions for self-defense, by farmers, by police or at indoor firing ranges.

The net effect, wrote Justice Kevin Dougherty, was to restrict the potential construction of shooting ranges to about a third of the entire township. Barris' home did not meet those restrictions.

Barris sought a zoning permit after he was warned he could face a fine as well as seizure of the gun used in any violation of the discharge ordinance. He was turned down for the zoning permit based on the size of his lot, proximity to other homes and location outside the two permissible zoning areas for ranges.

A county judge ruled for the township, but Commonwealth Court in 2021 called the discharge ordinance unconstitutional, violative of Barris' Second Amendment rights.

In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Pennsylvania attorney general's office aligned with the township, arguing that numerous laws across U.S. history have banned shooting guns or target practice in residential or populated areas.

Dougherty, writing for the majority, said Stroud Township's discharge ordinance “is fully consistent with this nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation." He included pages of examples, saying that "together they demonstrate a sustained and wide-ranging effort by municipalities, cities, and states of all stripes — big, small, urban, rural, Northern, Southern, etc. — to regulate a societal problem that has persisted since the birth of the nation."

In a dissent, Justice Sallie Up**** Mundy said Barris has a constitutional right to “achieve competency or proficiency in keeping arms for self-defense at one's home,” and that the Second Amendment's core self-defense protections are at stake.

[Shodan]

The neighbors and authorities would be surprised by the quantity and regularity of pests and varmints showing up on my property that needed dealt with.

[GunLawyer001]

Silencers.

[arjohnson]

Silencers.

Yep, what they don*t know won*t hurt them.

[Exbiker]

Wow if you look at the closest of his property line and shooting from the edge of the property it's about 450 feet but he certainly wouldn't stand at the edge and shoot at the stores. Government over reach IMHO.

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[Will3212]

So if your township dont have a no target shooting ordinance, you're still good?

[bogey1]

Some asshole tried to shut down a public range in luzerne county when he moved in. Well, it didn't work.

[bartomark]

So can this be challenged or is it absolute? I can see every township eventually doing this.
Suppressors are not an option because if you are caught they can confiscate your gun.

[*Klutch*]

Public ranges are always under fire from the people around them and the local twp reps who try and shut them down. I was higher up at a range a few years ago and there was constant issues with people trying to shut the range down and we actually had to make the backstops double in height and did a lot of reconstructing of the surrounding area to make it more safe. But also you get that one guy who is shooting at a target from 3ft with his pistol aimed up at the stars and who knows where those bullets landed

It is obviously overreach of gov’t but that has become what they do. There hasn’t been any reasonable laws, regulations, rules made in a long long time it’s all just make it so outrageous and then play the bargaining game