This is just about as insane as it gets. Daily Kos writer pajoly has a 21-year old ammosexual for a neighbor who can't be bothered to go shoot his weapon at a gun range anywhere that's not closer than his front yard.
Moms and dads are extremely upset after their 21-year-old neighbor, Joseph Carannate, told them he built a homemade gun range.
“I don't want to hurt myself or any neighbors. I don't want to hurt anybody. I just want to use this as my enjoyment,” Carannate told News Channel 8. “I don't want to have to go to a gun range, when I can just go outside my door.”
Carannate wants to fire his 9mm in his St. Petersburg yard, which happens to be just feet away from children. According to St. Petersburg Police, legally he's allowed to do it.
“I wouldn't have done all this if I didn't know the reaction,” Carannate told us, who claims he has all the proper paperwork for his weapon.
Never mind the kids playing in the neighborhood, because this is a legal thing in Florida.
The outdoor "gun range" next door. That's right, the homeowner behind their property has decided his front yard, which is 8 feet from my friend's back yard property line and a few houses away from mine, is the perfect spot for a gun range. This is a residential neighborhood in the city limits of Saint Petersburg, Florida. The lots are as small at 1/4 acre. A gun range. With real guns. With real bullets.
The homeowner's association president isn't happy about it either. In an email to the community, he wrote that the crazy neighbor with the gun range in his front yard isn't just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill gun guy.
This is not a "back yard" gun range. It's an amateur and reckless set-up in which a man has to stand in his front yard and fire toward his house (and therefore at the house behind him), at a pile of sand held together with an old wooden palette.
The pile of sand is 8' from a neighbor's property where small children live and about 20' feet from the children's bedroom windows.
The owner of this house has arrests for DUI, cocaine and hydrocodone, and has had 2 domestic violence cases filed against him. His son has announced he is coming to the house with a "variety of guns," including an assault rifle.
Oooh, an assault rifle. In a neighborhood with little kids. That doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do but in Florida you don't have to be smart, just armed.
Florida law was written by lunatics drunk with NRA power.
That's right. Florida law allows people to build and maintain shooting ranges in their backyards. And unless an owner becomes negligent or reckless, there's nothing a neighbor can do.
For example:* There's no restriction on the type of firearms or ammunition that can be used in a backyard shooting range.
* There's no restriction on the time of day or night your neighbors can use their gun range.
* And there's no restriction on gun ranges near a public school, day-care center or neighborhood playground. Talk about the need for duck-and-cover lessons.
Sunday night, "pajoly" ramped up the pressure with some good old fashioned media pressure right after the Super Bowl was over.
The hell raising is bearing fruit. I just spent over an hour with the local NBC News crew. They interviewed the kid (barely an adult) and filmed his "gun range." It is not going to make him look like a hero, let's just say that, especially as they also interviewed at the same time the immediately affected neighbor, my friend, who is a very conservative home-schooling teacher. Very bad optic for this kid, who does not even live here; it's his dad's place.
And more:
I just sent the new Democratic mayor of the City of Saint Petersburg the following email, copying a few other local leaders:
Hell hath no fury like a parent whose kids are at risk by political insanity. NBC News tonight after the Super Bowl. Same channel. The story will be national news within the week. Mayor, you've an opportunity and a head's up to get in front on this, not be pushed by events. I hope you take it. I regret this issue rears itself on your watch and in our fair city, but the issue is bigger than our town and our children.
Thank you Commissioner Welch for your time this evening. Fate puts you in a unique position to lead as well, living but 4 houses away from the "gun range."
Maybe decent people across both aisles prevail very soon in the Statehouse to fix this if responsible parents raise enough hell.
There's a hashtag for this if you're going to tweet this article: #frontyardgunrange
Neighbors want some simple modifications to existing law, modifications which any good, decent, red-blooded, gun-loving, life-respecting conservative should want, too.
For the children.
Also? F*ck the NRA.
