Residents of Wainscott continued to press for changes at the Maidstone Gun Club this week, including shutting it down, citing numerous instances of bullets hitting houses and the potential for a tragedy.
At Saturday’s virtual meeting of the hamlet’s citizens advisory committee, and again at the East Hampton Town Board’s meeting on Tuesday, complaints were aired about the gun club’s lease of 97 acres of town-owned land, for which it pays $100 per year. The lease expires on Oct. 31, 2023, and its principals have filed a notice of intent to renew it.
Two residents of Merchants Path had told the town board on Sept. 20 of bullets hitting their houses, most recently on Aug. 5. That incident, in which a discharged bullet is said to have come within 10 feet of a person, is being investigated by the New York State Police.
“The fact that bullets from the gun club could land on somebody’s house more than once is disturbing,” Barry Raebeck of the citizens advisory committee said on Saturday, listing three additional concerns shared by many on the committee. He spoke for several of his colleagues in calling the lease terms “a gift to a private group of individuals who are very secretive.” The next lease should reflect the land’s market value, he said.
Second, “We know that bullets and the discharging of weapons produces pollution, especially lead pollution,” he said, charging that there is no record of an assessment of pollution or remediation for “the constant dropping of lead into the soil and air.”
The third concern is noise pollution, “which is extraordinary for anyone who lives near the gun club,” Mr. Raebeck said. “To me, gunshots have negative connotations. I don’t like to hear that, my grandchildren don’t like to hear that.” He lives more than a mile from the club, he said.
“There’s no hours, there’s no regulation,” Mr. Raebeck continued. “The gate is open, nobody’s monitoring who comes and goes, there are no records of who shoots, people don’t sign in or out.” It is neither extreme nor irrational, he said, “to say that we should have strict regulations of the use of our land, especially when in its current iteration it bothers a lot of people, and almost killed someone recently.”
Concern was palpable at the virtual meeting. Some residents are reluctant to publicly criticize the club, one stating that the house they live in has been hit by bullets multiple times and that their lives and those of their neighbors, guests, and children are in danger. “Do we need someone to die to say we shouldn’t have a gun club?” they asked.
The club surely does not need 97 acres, said Anthony Liberatore, a member of the advisory committee. “The town has the right not to renew the lease if it determines that the land is of some municipal use,” he said, suggesting that a solar farm might be considered.
Roxana Pintilie, who had told the town board of the Aug. 5 incident at her residence, which was captured on video, said that five houses have been hit by bullets. “This is a life-threatening situation,” she said. A gun club “has no place in this community. It should not be here, period, end of story, for many reasons.”
At the town board meeting on Tuesday, Ms. Pintilie said that she supports people’s right to possess firearms, “but not for a gun club to operate in a dense, highly populated area that has managed in the past 18 years” — she has lived in her house since 2004 — “to shoot people’s homes.” Residents’ safety should be the town board’s primary concern, she said, yet “Wainscott citizens are not safe.”
Another resident, calling in to the meeting, said it was “an absolute miracle that, so far, no one has been injured or killed by an errant bullet.” She is “absolutely terrified for my granddaughter,” she said, and abandoned a plan to construct a playset in her backyard. Children are not allowed to play there, she said. “This club is dangerous.”
At the advisory committee meeting, Mr. Raebeck said he would draft a letter incorporating what has been said about the club in recent months, which could become a letter from the committee to the town board.
Barry Frankel, who presided at the meeting in the absence of Carolyn Logan Gluck, the committee’s chairwoman, said he would communicate the committee’s sentiments to Councilwoman Sylvia Overby, the town board’s liaison to the committee, who was also absent. Mr. Raebeck, he said, “will start composing a position document for further discussion. But we understand the need to move on this now.”
