Local Resentment
But as local officials become aware of the laws, resentment is building. The legislation, these officials say, has effectively stripped them of their zoning power, leaving them unable to control gun clubs. "They could exceed the safe noise levels as determined by medical experts, and there's not a doggone thing we can do about it," says City Attorney Cindy Harmison in Lenexa, Kan., in Sen. O'Connor's district.
The NRA is unapologetic. In many cases, "ranges [were] being shut down for no reason other than people just didn't like them," says Randy Kozuch, the NRA's director of state and local affairs. "We saw this happening in an alarming number of states."
Asked to provide an example of a range forced to close, Mr. Kozuch says he can't think of any. The National Association of Shooting Ranges, in Newtown, Conn., doesn't track the number of ranges in the U.S., but the trade group's chief executive, Bob Delfay, says the figure appears to be rising rather than falling. In the last five years -- the same period during which legislatures have been granting the industry protection -- the number of inquiries to the association from parties interested in building new shooting ranges has quadrupled, to roughly 1,200 a year, Mr. Delfay says.
Still, in the mid-1990s, the NRA intensified its state-level lobbying for range-protection laws, pumping money into state political races. "I made that one of my biggest priorities," Mr. Kozuch says.
Potent Lobby
The NRA, with four million members nationwide and deep reservoirs of cash for campaign contributions, has long been considered one of the most potent lobbying organizations in American politics. But its influence in Washington appeared to wane during the Clinton administration, as a number of highly publicized school shootings damped public support for the organization's pro-gun agenda. In the late 1990s, a number of cities filed lawsuits against firearm manufacturers, seeking to hold them liable for the public costs of gun violence.
During this time, the NRA redoubled its efforts in state capitals, contributing large sums to candidates for state office. In many states, the group sought legislation protecting gun makers from municipal suits or shielding shooting ranges from legal actions concerning noise -- or both.
Among the beneficiaries was Kansas's Sen. O'Connor, a first-term senator who won election in 2000. After Sen. O'Connor herself, the NRA was her campaign's biggest contributor, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, a not-for-profit group based in Helena, Mont. The NRA contributed $1,500 to the senator's campaign, the institute said.
Sen. O'Connor says she sponsored the NRA-supported bill last year in part to save the Powder Creek Shooting Park in Lenexa, which is a thriving suburb of Kansas City.
That was news to the people who run Powder Creek. "We didn't know anything about it," says Roger Turner, chairman of the board of the Kansas Field and Gun Dog Association, which has owned and operated the park since it opened in 1949. Lenexa Mayor Joan Bowman says no one was trying to close the range. Of the legislation by her fellow Republican, Sen. O'Connor, Mayor Bowman says simply: "It was a bill for which there was no need."
The NRA's Mr. Kozuch says: "In many states there may not have been problems. But it was best just to go ahead and get it passed as a preventative-maintenance measure."