Club stresses safety rules during Range Day

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This article was published 06/06/2022 (1558 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEAR SIDNEY — The hills in Westman were alive with the sounds of gunfire during National Range Day on Saturday as sport shooters showed the public it can be a safe and fun activity for anyone.

One of those ranges was the Melvin Road Gun Club, located south of the Trans-Canada Highway between Sidney and Austin. The club was open all day Saturday for members and anyone interested in finding out what it’s like to target shoot. Some brought their own weapons, but there were firearms available ranging from handguns to shotguns and rifles for anyone to try under the supervision of members and range marshals.

Members were also helping novices, many of whom were children, learn proper firearms handling and safety protocols, such as safe loading, eye and ear protection and the steps to load, fire and safety check after firing.

This is considered a fun and educational time, but a disgruntled feeling was shared among most of the shooters, said club president Mark Michie. Proposed regulations are being debated in the House of Commons that would include a freeze on the purchase, sale, transfer and import of handguns and possibly adding more high-powered firearms to the banned list.

“We are trying to introduce shooting in a safe manner to as many people as possible because they need to find out what some people and members of our government are telling them aren’t true,” he said. “We’re hoping to get as many people here as we can, and we do have some people from Portage that came and a fellow from St. Claude, as well as my own family.”

He added there are about 80 to 90 members at the Melvin Road Gun Club.

What bothers Michie and other firearms owners is the misinformation, especially when it comes to educating future shooters. He said all of his family members handle guns and all of his children hunt and have taken deer. Everyone at the club follows safety rules and handling and transport laws. For example, if someone has to go into the shooting field, or “downrange,” the law states everyone must clear their guns, put their guns down and step away until the person is off the field.

Most of all, he said lawful firearms owners are not a threat to society. He reiterated previous comments to the Sun that the government is targeting the wrong people. He added a better solution would be to give more resources to the RCMP and border enforcement like the Canadian Border Services Agency to stop illegal firearms from entering Canada and getting into the hands of criminals.

The proposed legislation does include tighter penalties for gun trafficking, but Michie said they are still going after the wrong people and law enforcement needs more support.

“To me, handguns are a symbol of freedom, and this is an age when Justin Trudeau is trying to take away our freedom in many areas of our life,” he said. “I won’t go into the rest, but as a farmer, I want to be able to control the gophers in my pasture because they eat my crops. We hunt as a family, so it is important for food as well as for fun.”

Learning to shoot on ranges also teaches people about responsibility and can sometimes be humbling once they actually handle a firearm, said Portage la Prairie resident Jerry Goebel. He was helping some of the younger shooters handle and shoot rifles when not firing his own.

Teaching children and novice shooters in a safe and controlled environment makes them less dangerous and far less likely to be a threat.

“Look around and see these kids. None of them will be dangerous because we are teaching them about proper respect for shooting,” he said. “I’m worried about how guns are portrayed in movies and the media sometimes because they pump up people with already bad intent. This has no bearing on a range because we are showing them how it is done in reality.”

He added he understood people are afraid of firearms, especially in light of recent mass shootings in the United States and even in Canada, but those mass shooters had evil intent, he said, and the laws should be focused on stopping them, not the people who know how to safely handle guns.

» kmckinley@brandonsun.com

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