East Hampton Gun Club's Future Hinges on 'Major Changes'

The Maidstone Gun Club, already shuttered by a judge after bullets from an outdoor rifle range hit a nearby house last summer, faces a high bar if East Hampton Town is to renew its lease for parkland adjacent to East Hampton Airport in Wainscott, lawmakers said this week.

The three members of the Town Board who may be the final arbiters of whether the lease is renewed or not when it expires in October, said that the gun club would need to make major changes to the facility and to its operating procedures if it is to be granted a new lease.

“I do support a range for the police department, but I do not support continuing the lease unless extensive modifications are made to the facility,” Councilwoman Kathee Burke Gonzalez told members of the Wainscott Citizens Advisory Committee on Saturday.

Burke-Gonzalez noted that with Councilwoman Sylvia Overby having stepped away from her duties indefinitely to seek medical treatment, and Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc having recused himself from town business related to the gun club, of which he is a member, a vote to renew the club’s lease may well come down to just herself and the other two council members, David Lys and Cate Rogers. A vote to renew the lease would have to be unanimous if the three are indeed the only ones to cast votes.

Rogers, who has voiced skepticism about renewing the lease previously, echoed Burke-Gonzalez’s sentiments on Tuesday, saying that major safety upgrades will clearly be needed at the facility to stand any chance of winning support from her.

She said she may support a lease if only the existing indoor pistol range is in use, and wants the Town Police department to be able to have a place to train and practice shooting, but that she has heard no proposals from the club for improvements at the rifle range that would earn her support.

“I want to support the police and what we need for our first responders, but safety is number one, that has to be guaranteed — and I don’t know how you do that, I have not seen anything yet,” she said.

Lys said he does think the club plays an important role in the community that should earn it consideration for a renewed lease, but that he wants to see “major changes to the infrastructure, safety and accountability” at the club’s facilities.

“I think they are an asset to a segment of the population in the Town of East Hampton and also for our emergency services,” he said. “It lets individuals enjoy target shooting in a safe way and also is a place for young residents to learn gun safety and handling.”

The gun club’s president, Walter Johnson, did not return calls seeking comment on the lease renewal.

The outdoor rifle range at the club has been shuttered since last August, after a bullet struck a house on Merchants Path, about a mile downrange from the rifle shooting bays at the gun club.

The owners of the home that was struck by the bullet, Roxana and Christine Pintilie, and several of their neighbors sued the gun club and the town last November, demanding the club be closed down. A judge granted a temporary restraining order barring the use of all the club’s facilities until further notice.

Merchants Path homeowners have reported finding bullets lodged in their homes on several occasions dating back to 2004, but there had never been definitive evidence that the bullets had come from the gun club. Skeptics had pointed out that people frequently shoot guns, illegally, in the expanse of woods that surround the airport property and had pointed to the safety barricades at the gun club that appeared to make it nearly impossible for a bullet to escape the range.

But an investigation by East Hampton Town Police that was made public in January as part of the lawsuit, found evidence that bullets had, in fact, been deflected from the range and had passed through barricades intended to stop them.

The rifle range itself is open-air but for an enclosed shooting area with five shooting stands. Each stand has a seat and shooting table in front of a concrete tunnel. All shooters are supposed to sit using the table to stabilize their guns when shooting.

Beyond the end of the concrete tunnels are two wooden barricades across the top of the range intended to stop any errant bullets that might exit the tunnels on a trajectory that could carry them out of the range. The rest of the 200-yard range is uncovered, leading to a 40-foot-high earthen berm where targets are arranged.

The police report said that time-stamped security camera video from the Pintilies’ home and from the rifle range seemed to prove that the bullet that struck the home and another that is heard whizzing past the house, came from a tactical rifle being fired improperly, and somewhat ineptly, by two men who were shooting at the range.

The video showed the men were not using seated shooting tables, as required by the club, according to the police investigation report, and there was no club employee supervising the range.

Failing to follow the club’s shooting guidelines and the poor marksmanship of the shooters had caused bullets to deflect off the inside of the concrete shooting tubes that were intended to keep bullets on the range, the report by Detective Luke McNamara said.

The investigation also revealed that the two wooden barricades that top the range and are intended to stop deflected bullets were not lined with steel reinforcements as they were supposed to be and the investigators noted that it appeared that the timbers showed signs of multiple bullets having passed through them on a trajectory that could carry them far downrange of the club.

At Saturday’s discussion in Wainscott, members of the CAC said that the town should not renew the club’s lease. In addition to anger over the longstanding issues of safety and noise surrounding the club, they also raised concerns of soil and groundwater pollution from lead bullets left on the ground, something they said has been found at other gun clubs around the country.

“Why are you putting yourselves through more litigation, just say you’re not going to renew the lease and be done with it,” said Anthony Liberatore, a member of the CAC.

“The gun club is an anachronism,” echoed Barry Raebeck, who lives near the club. “You can’t renew a lease when now it is surrounded by subdivisions, which the town approved.”

Separate from the concerns about safety, the lease renewal will also hinge on a new factor: the rent.

The gun club opened in 1982 on the airport property, where it leases 100 acres of land zoned for parks and recreational uses. Under the terms of the original 30 year lease, which was reset in 1993, the club pays just $100 per year — a price that was not uncommon for leases of the airport property at the time.

But in 2000, the Federal Aviation Administration told the town that all leases for lands on the airport property must be brought up to market rates, based on appraisals for similar uses.

Some of the airport property along Industrial Road that is zoned for commercial uses now rents for upward of $100,000 per year. But the gun club property is zoned as parkland for recreational uses and would likely command a much lower fee — though Burke-Gonzales acknowledged that the $100 lease is certain to be a thing of the past.

“There is a lot that needs to be worked out,” she said. “The status quo is not acceptable.”