Pennsylvania's high court sides with township over its ban of a backyard gun range

Source: Associated Press

Pennsylvania’s high court sides with township over its ban of a backyard gun range

BY MARK SCOLFORO
Updated 6:25 PM EST, February 21, 2024

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — 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, 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 (2.02-hectare) 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 (45.72 meters) 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.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/pennsylvania-gun-ranges-court-second-amendment-c605a2264e932c9a9836d5ee7703f68d