Miwok tribe picks smaller shooting range
By Stephen Magagini, Sacramento Bee
Responding to a barrage of protest from neighbors and local residents, the Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians, owners of Red Hawk Casino, have scaled back plans to put in a public 29-lane outdoor gun range south of Highway 50 and instead develop a small gun range “open only to tribal members and their guests.”
The decision to go smaller was met with relief by opponents, some of whom live 100 yards from the proposed range on Shingle Springs Drive. But they remain concerned about sound and safety issues, said community organizer Damon Tribble, a web designer whose daughter attends second grade at a school 1,000 yards from the shooting range.
“We appreciate this gesture by the tribe, and we think this is a step in the right direction,” Tribble said, noting the tribe, as a sovereign nation, can do what it wants on the 2 acres of tribal trust land it owns – and El Dorado County government and courts can’t do anything about it. But Tribble said he and other neighbors wish the tribe would relocate the gun range to a place “that’s a lot more wild and remote.”
Tribble and his core group of 15 activists have launched a website, a Facebook page and YouTube videos featuring maps, sound studies and guns being fired at the range site.