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<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> Still gunning in the 21st century
by Chris Niskanen, Outdoors editor
A yellowing photograph from 1935 tells a story.
A group of men in work boots, standing shoulder to shoulder, celebrate the construction of their new shooting range, the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club, in an open field along the Mississippi River. They are blue-collar guys because South St. Paul was -- and is -- a working man's town.
The photos comes from a different era. Shotgun sports, such as trap and skeet, are hugely popular, but gun control and school-yard shootings are a far-fetched notion. Women and youngsters are noticeably absent in the picture. A tapped wooden keg is visible among the grinning men, whose glasses are raised in good cheer.
Fade and cut to the summer of 2000.
It is a Tuesday evening, and the parking lot of the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club is bustling with activity. The lot has a full complement of beefy four-wheel-drive pickups, but also Cadillacs, pricey Suburbans and that ubiquitous family car, the minivan.
Men and women filter from the lot to the various ranges: trap, skeet and sporting clays. Engineers mingle with pipefitters. Gun control is an occasional but serious topic.
A group of teen-agers on the shooting range get tips from attentive parents. A young girl's voice on the intercom announces the evening's lineup of trap teams representing local corporations.
It has been 65 years since the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club opened its shooting ranges, which are sandwiched between a pair of railroad tracks and a swamp along the Mississippi River.
There are obvious contrasts between today's shooters and the club's founders in 1935 (women and youngsters are prevalent today), but perhaps most remarkable is the fact that the club even exists in the face of growing urban sprawl and anti-gun sentiment.
Other clubs in the Twin Cities haven't been so lucky.
``In the metro area, we've been losing gun clubs at a rate of about one a year until recently,'' said Chuck Niska, the shooting range coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources. ``You have the pressures of development and the fact people simply don't like them.''
The South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club is, in fact, thriving, despite being located just a short drive from downtown St. Paul.
Membership has soared to the 1,200. League shoots are booked solid. A sporting clays course is hugely popular. Three local companies -- Lockheed Martin, The St. Paul Cos. and the West Group -- still sponsor active trap leagues.
About 50 kids participate in the club's junior trap league; a traveling team recently returned from the state shoot with several first-place trophies.
``We realize the future of shooting, hunting and the whole outdoors is through educating more kids,'' said club President Jim Gelhaye, 41, whose roots with the club go back 30 years. ``We're very big on youth programs.''
The gun club stays alive because of a mixture of geography and community spirit. The club is surrounded by a dike built by federal engineers to keep flood waters away, but the dikes and surrounding woods also help reduce noise from the ranges.
The land around the club is also a former industrial area, which isn't exactly suitable for development, said club manager Bob Haselberger.
The club also raises money for academic scholarships for local students. It's part of the club's contributions to the local community, said Mark Waldo, a member of the board of directors.
The club thrives on tradition, too. Many of today's shooters are sons and daughters of past members. While many of the shooters hunt, the majority of them don't, which says a lot for the allure of shooting sports, Haselberger said.
The club has four trap fields, three skeet fields and a full-sporting clays course.
``You can buy a box of shells and round of trap for $15 a night,'' Haselberger said. ``That's a pretty good buy. We're a very strong organization. Every night we're full, but we won't expand our shooting hours.''
The club also sponsors a winter shooting league, which starts in January and continues in all temperatures.
``We rarely call off a day of winter shooting,'' Haselberger said.
Jim and Debbie Deering, both 52, live in nearby Inver Grove Heights. Jim is one of the club's top male shooters, while Debbie is one of the state's top female trap shooters. Debbie's father was club president in 1964; the couple have been members since the early 1980s.
``The men always treat me like another shooter,'' Debbie said.
Asked whether shooting might be perceived as dangerous by non-club members, Debbie responded: ``This is our sport, and we're not dangerous people. My gun and I are not dangerous.''
Haselberger said the club hasn't had a firearms-related accident in its history.
One day last week, brothers Jeff and Mike Studeman sat in the club house and bought bottles of root beer for their children after a round of trap shooting. Jeff lives in nearby Inver Grove Heights, Mike drove over from Bloomington.
The kids are Sabrina, 14, and Trevor, 13 (both Mike's) and Jeff's daughter, Catie, 14. As they do every Tuesday night, the teen-agers shot a round of trap as their fathers stood by and offered words of advice and encouragement.
``I just like shooting,'' Sabrina said. ``I use a 20 gauge. The kick doesn't bother me that much.''
Trevor is a better shot than the girls, but they're catching up to him. He said he's looking forward to pheasant hunting with his father this fall.
``I'll be a better shot,'' he said.
Catie said she likes trap shooting because it's different. She gets quite a few questions from her classmates about it.
``They think it's pretty cool,'' she said.
The word ``cool'' wasn't in the vocabulary of the fellows who built the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club in 1935. But they probably would smile about a 14-year-old girl sipping root beer and hanging out with her father on the same grounds they designed 65 years ago.
The people in the picture have changed, but the shooting tradition in South St. Paul hasn't changed a bit.
-----------------------------------------
Chris Niskanen's outdoors column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Send items of interest to him at Pioneer Press Sports, 345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN, 55101. Fax at (651) 228-5527, or call him at (651) 228-5524. E-mail at cniskanen@pioneerpress.com
© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press[/quote]
------------------
RKBA!
"The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security"
Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 4
Concealed Carry is illegal in Ohio.
Ohioans for Concealed Carry Website
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR> Still gunning in the 21st century
by Chris Niskanen, Outdoors editor
A yellowing photograph from 1935 tells a story.
A group of men in work boots, standing shoulder to shoulder, celebrate the construction of their new shooting range, the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club, in an open field along the Mississippi River. They are blue-collar guys because South St. Paul was -- and is -- a working man's town.
The photos comes from a different era. Shotgun sports, such as trap and skeet, are hugely popular, but gun control and school-yard shootings are a far-fetched notion. Women and youngsters are noticeably absent in the picture. A tapped wooden keg is visible among the grinning men, whose glasses are raised in good cheer.
Fade and cut to the summer of 2000.
It is a Tuesday evening, and the parking lot of the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club is bustling with activity. The lot has a full complement of beefy four-wheel-drive pickups, but also Cadillacs, pricey Suburbans and that ubiquitous family car, the minivan.
Men and women filter from the lot to the various ranges: trap, skeet and sporting clays. Engineers mingle with pipefitters. Gun control is an occasional but serious topic.
A group of teen-agers on the shooting range get tips from attentive parents. A young girl's voice on the intercom announces the evening's lineup of trap teams representing local corporations.
It has been 65 years since the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club opened its shooting ranges, which are sandwiched between a pair of railroad tracks and a swamp along the Mississippi River.
There are obvious contrasts between today's shooters and the club's founders in 1935 (women and youngsters are prevalent today), but perhaps most remarkable is the fact that the club even exists in the face of growing urban sprawl and anti-gun sentiment.
Other clubs in the Twin Cities haven't been so lucky.
``In the metro area, we've been losing gun clubs at a rate of about one a year until recently,'' said Chuck Niska, the shooting range coordinator for the Department of Natural Resources. ``You have the pressures of development and the fact people simply don't like them.''
The South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club is, in fact, thriving, despite being located just a short drive from downtown St. Paul.
Membership has soared to the 1,200. League shoots are booked solid. A sporting clays course is hugely popular. Three local companies -- Lockheed Martin, The St. Paul Cos. and the West Group -- still sponsor active trap leagues.
About 50 kids participate in the club's junior trap league; a traveling team recently returned from the state shoot with several first-place trophies.
``We realize the future of shooting, hunting and the whole outdoors is through educating more kids,'' said club President Jim Gelhaye, 41, whose roots with the club go back 30 years. ``We're very big on youth programs.''
The gun club stays alive because of a mixture of geography and community spirit. The club is surrounded by a dike built by federal engineers to keep flood waters away, but the dikes and surrounding woods also help reduce noise from the ranges.
The land around the club is also a former industrial area, which isn't exactly suitable for development, said club manager Bob Haselberger.
The club also raises money for academic scholarships for local students. It's part of the club's contributions to the local community, said Mark Waldo, a member of the board of directors.
The club thrives on tradition, too. Many of today's shooters are sons and daughters of past members. While many of the shooters hunt, the majority of them don't, which says a lot for the allure of shooting sports, Haselberger said.
The club has four trap fields, three skeet fields and a full-sporting clays course.
``You can buy a box of shells and round of trap for $15 a night,'' Haselberger said. ``That's a pretty good buy. We're a very strong organization. Every night we're full, but we won't expand our shooting hours.''
The club also sponsors a winter shooting league, which starts in January and continues in all temperatures.
``We rarely call off a day of winter shooting,'' Haselberger said.
Jim and Debbie Deering, both 52, live in nearby Inver Grove Heights. Jim is one of the club's top male shooters, while Debbie is one of the state's top female trap shooters. Debbie's father was club president in 1964; the couple have been members since the early 1980s.
``The men always treat me like another shooter,'' Debbie said.
Asked whether shooting might be perceived as dangerous by non-club members, Debbie responded: ``This is our sport, and we're not dangerous people. My gun and I are not dangerous.''
Haselberger said the club hasn't had a firearms-related accident in its history.
One day last week, brothers Jeff and Mike Studeman sat in the club house and bought bottles of root beer for their children after a round of trap shooting. Jeff lives in nearby Inver Grove Heights, Mike drove over from Bloomington.
The kids are Sabrina, 14, and Trevor, 13 (both Mike's) and Jeff's daughter, Catie, 14. As they do every Tuesday night, the teen-agers shot a round of trap as their fathers stood by and offered words of advice and encouragement.
``I just like shooting,'' Sabrina said. ``I use a 20 gauge. The kick doesn't bother me that much.''
Trevor is a better shot than the girls, but they're catching up to him. He said he's looking forward to pheasant hunting with his father this fall.
``I'll be a better shot,'' he said.
Catie said she likes trap shooting because it's different. She gets quite a few questions from her classmates about it.
``They think it's pretty cool,'' she said.
The word ``cool'' wasn't in the vocabulary of the fellows who built the South St. Paul Rod and Gun Club in 1935. But they probably would smile about a 14-year-old girl sipping root beer and hanging out with her father on the same grounds they designed 65 years ago.
The people in the picture have changed, but the shooting tradition in South St. Paul hasn't changed a bit.
-----------------------------------------
Chris Niskanen's outdoors column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Send items of interest to him at Pioneer Press Sports, 345 Cedar St., St. Paul, MN, 55101. Fax at (651) 228-5527, or call him at (651) 228-5524. E-mail at cniskanen@pioneerpress.com
© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press[/quote]
------------------
RKBA!
"The people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security"
Ohio Constitution, Article I, Section 4
Concealed Carry is illegal in Ohio.
Ohioans for Concealed Carry Website
