Any update on what's going on with them?  I live just down the road and would love to go shoot.  Thanks all.

Same here. I always here someone shooting in that direction, and I get my hopes up.

I saw a update on the KRC Facebook page today, not sure what it means for the club, sounds like they were in court. I live about 5 minuets from the club and would like to see it reopened. Kitsap County is out of control.

http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/local-news/court-hearing-delayed-kitsap-rifle-and-revolver-club-will-remain-closed_82499931




Article from today.

In order to reopen, the KRRC needs a judge to okay operation of the range without a permit, or obtain a permit from the County which will allow the Commissioners to place any restriction on the range they want.  Judge Serko has already stated that rifles greater than 30 caliber are not suitable for use at the range.  Where she gets this crazy idea is unknown; something to do with whether or not they are suitable for hunting as far as I know.  A 30 caliber restriction affects .308 caliber rifles also.

The problem is thousands of people want the range to stay open, hundreds of people want it closed or operations curtailed.  The rest of the nearly quarter million people in the county probably don't care at all.  I live in Mason County, one of two counties in WA that don’t have an outdoor rifle range.  The Commissioners barely give me the time of day when I speak or write to them.

The problem with the County is that they seek to restrict shooting in the county and are doing NOTHING to promote it.  I don't think issuing a permit to the Poulsbo Sportsman Club which has been operating safely for decades counts.  They also seem to believe anything negative about the club.  

In 2010 the County’s Prosecuting Attorney tried to block use of noise abatement by calling its use illegal.  This happened a short while after the lawsuit over noise was filed.  While the state’s AG said use of noise abatement at a rifle range was not illegal, it took me over four years to get the Commissioners to acknowledge that their lawyer tried to block the use of noise abatement at the range.  They have still refused to tell me why their lawyer attempted to do this.  Ms. Robinson, the current Prosecuting Attorney tells me she doesn't know why her predecessor acted the way he did.   Too bad she can’t simply ask; Hauge refused to tell me why when he was the PA.

Another problem is the people on this forum.  You might expect gun owners who actually enjoy shooting to take the side of a club that has been operating safely since 1926.  But a few bad apples have called the club's actions "flat Earth thinking".  I wonder where they get this from?  Was it from the person who says he can hear and FEEL gunfire concussion from 1-2/3's miles away while inside his house?  Was it from the people who claim bullets from the KRRC are hitting their property but are so concerned they don't call the police?  Was it the people who call gunshots with noise levels that are barely audible "the sounds of war"?  Was it from the County who paid for a noise study near the range boundary that showed no useful data?

If the KRRC forfeits its grandfathered status by requesting a permit to remain in operation, it is likely just a matter of time before the county places restrictions on operation that drive it into bankruptcy.  They already want no machineguns, explosives, cannons (of any size), rifles >30 caliber and curtailed action shooting.  They wanted to ban noise abatement but the AG told them that a box was not a dangerous weapon.  The Commissioners are more concerned about the hundreds of people who move in close to the range then complain about the noise than the thousands of people who need a safe place to shoot

These clowns are the people ruining it for Kitsap County.  Every Kitsap County resident who fails to show up at County Commissioner meetings, is in effect, telling them they are doing a good job.  That is the way a democracy/republic works.  Hope you enjoy it.

Randy

Kitsap County prefers that shooters go looking on public lands for shooting spots, where they will enjoy potentially violent encounters with meth cooks, heroin camps, and so on.

This whole situation is quite new and not logical to me.  I moved here about 6 months ago from the Reno area.  Our county government actively supported shooting sports.  They built a shooting complex that was amazing and actually made money.  Any given weekend you could shoot IDPA, uspsa, 3 gun, cowboy action or hop on the 15 lane 1000 yard range.  The range officer worked for the Sherriff's office and could be a pain in the rear but he only managed the regular rifle line (300 yards with targets and gongs out to 1000) and the pistol line.  All kinds of different organizations had storage facilities on the range to hold their competition gear and we hosted many regional shooting event.  

I say all that to see if anyone has any ideas how we can start on the path to getting something like that around here.  If we had a public range with action shooting bays, 1000 yard lanes and areas for groups to store competition gear it would be one of the only ones on this side of the state from what I have seen.  People would come from all over to partake.  One of the "If you build it they will come" type things.  So any ideas?  Would something like that even be possible here?

Not with the current political situation.

Seattle and Olympia are currently occupied by a rabid anti-gun political movement that in some ways makes San Fransisco and New York City look moderate.  The voting demographics are likely not going to cause that to change anytime soon; Seattle has hit the critical mass, density-wise, that it can outvote the rest of the state and essentially use that voting bloc to choose the governor and pass state initiatives at will.  It is also growing at a phenomenal rate and that demographic is going to continue to become more proportionally lopsided compared to the rest of the state population.

Unless the rest of Washington starts organizing for a reliably higher than average turnout - which is highly unlikely - that situation won't change unless there is a significant population outflow from Seattle to somewhere else in the country, either due to economic, political, or (long shot) a public health crisis, like an epidemic.

Basically, unless a statistically improbable, highly organized voting pattern picks up across the entire rural area of the state and/or Seattle + Bellevue gets teh Ebolas, the powers that be are going to continue to do everything possible to not just keep people from having a place to shoot in Washington, but also to keep them from possessing anything to shoot with.

That is what WAS happening with the KRRC several years ago.  Things were a bit slower back in 2000 and earlier with the club gate always locked unless a member was going through it.  Then shooting intensified on the range's small 8 acres of primary use (the shooting area is surrounded by about 60 acres of buffer zone owned by the club) as more organized shooting activities started to take place and especially after the County swapped land with the DNR followed by a sale of the land to the club itself.  Part of sale agreement was opening the club to the public.  More range safety officers were trained (I'm one of those) and the berms were built up higher.  The rifle and pistol lines were further enclosed to reduce noise.  All of these things were desired it seems by the County.

But then the lawsuit came, followed by the Prosecuting Attorney's attempt to discourage the use of noise abatement at the range.  When the appeals court upheld the club's grandfathered rights, a new county ordinance was passed requiring a use permit in order to continue to operate.  The new law does not require the county to actually issue a permit nor does it limit the conditions of the property use on the permit.  In other words, the County will end up running the range and can eliminate shooting at their whim.

The irony is that the trial was moved to Pierce County which later on passed rules PROTECTING rifle ranges.  All of Kitsap County's rules regarding rifle ranges are devoted to limiting their use; not promoting them.  Anytime they claim they want the KRRC to remain open they're lying in my opinion.

Randy

Looks like my experience is shared. . . . you forgot the idiots from Pope lumber though.

and to be fair, it doesn't get much better when you head out to Mason county.

I have a nice 100yd clearing on public land near my place that I almost never see anyone at, other than horse riders, but I still find fresh trash dumped every time. I think it happens at night. I try to bring back what I can.

I will never forget one of the first times I brought my now-wife out to go shoot some .22s. There is a chunk of public land out in Dewatto with a few little pothole lakes and gravel pits. We pull into one of the gravel pits I had shot in no more than a year before, and there is a circle of old beat up trailers joined together by plywood. Looked deserted, so I put the truck in park and started to get out, just then my wife screamed as 2-3 giant ass pitbulls come bursting out of the "structure" and come charging at me full speed ahead. I quickly jumped back into the truck and we got out of there before we found out who was living in that mess.

That's the first time I ever ran into a literal camp on public land, but I've seen the occasional tent and plywood structure, and have had brush pickers walk straight out of the underbrush right between me and my target, with no warning at all, almost like they're deaf..

So if some incident occurs in a situation like that, where a target shooter ends up shooting someone in self-defense, or some brush picker walks out into crossfire, it's squarely on the county's hands IMO. That is more likely to happen in Mason, but KRRC was pretty much the only range serving all of Mason simply by virtue of being close to the county line.