17 North Beach Street
Nantucket, MA 02554
(508) 228-1515
LONG SHOT
After seventeen years, is the Nantucket Shooting Park finally on target?
Given the fierce national debate surrounding gun control, one might think that a proposed shooting range on Nantucket would split the community down the middle. But when Article 101 came up at the Town Meeting this past April to award a long-term lease of twenty-seven acres to the Nantucket Hunting Association for the purposes of a shooting range, voters overwhelmingly approved it, 307 to just 32.
Despite this apparent public support, the association’s campaign to break ground on this property located by the airport has been a nearly twenty-year saga, hamstrung by land lease negotiations, permitting applications and lawsuits leveled by a contingent of nearby abutters. Now with the twenty-five-year lease locked up and multistage plans drawn, is Nantucket’s one and only legal shooting range finally hitting the mark?
“It is hard to say what will be a hurdle or just a formality in the process,” explained the association’s president, Steve Holdgate, about the immediate future of the Nantucket Shooting Park, which will be built in stages beginning with an outdoor archery and trap shooting range, followed by an outdoor pistol range, and then possibly a costly indoor facility. “What seems straightforward in a permitting process can become delayed when challenged as we have experienced. Some opposing the project have vowed to keep fighting this at every step unless it is completely an indoor facility.”
The Nantucket Hunting Association first approached the Select Board with a proposal for a shooting range back in 2003. They argued that the Town-owned forty-seven acres off of Shadbush Road near Nantucket Memorial Airport had already been used as an informal shooting range for decades. Creating an official shooting range, they argued, would not only benefit recreational hunters and marksmen, but also improve overall gun safety on the island and its impact on the environment.
A year later, Nantucket Town Meeting approved Article 90 authorizing the lease of twenty-seven acres of Town-owned land for the shooting range. The association applied for a permit with the Zoning Board of Appeals and also approached the Nantucket Conservation Commission, the abutting property owner, as well as the Tom Nevers Civic Association, to address their concerns in a memorandum of understanding. News of the subsequent zoning board meeting ultimately activated a group of nearby home owners in opposition of the range that has been involved ever since.
Made up mostly of longtime seasonal residents living on Wigwam Road, New South Road and Madequecham Road, the group opposing the shooting range has argued primarily on the basis of health and environmental concerns, particularly the impact of lead from the bullets, which they say poses significant health risks. “The American Academy of Pediatrics clearly states that there is zero safe level of lead in the body and the brain,” said Dr. Carl Marci, a resident on New South Road who has helped lead the opposition in recent years. “Secondly, [Nantucket is] a sole source aquafer; lead has a way of leaching and making its way into the water supply. We know this from other shooting parks in Massachusetts.”
According to Marci and his fellow members of the opposition, a disproportionate number of whom are physicians, recent studies have shown that trace amounts of lead already exist in the soil in the proposed shooting range area due to unauthorized shooting. “Once there is lead in the water, it’s there, it’s contaminated,” said Dr. Edward Soffen, a seasonal resident on Wigwam Road who along with his wife, pediatrician Dr. Debbie Soffen, has been vocal on this issue. “You can’t clean it up. If you test the water and there’s lead, it’s already too late.”
When the
Inquirer and Mirror published an article in 2021 that included a quote from Debbie Soffen alluding to the opposition’s concerns over lead contamination, Holdgate drafted a rebuttal letter. “The opposition has expressed concern about potential lead contamination occurring from the projectiles being fired at the range,” Holdgate wrote. “These concerns are not based on facts, but instead make assumptions based on other unspecified shooting ranges.” Holdgate went on to detail the proposed measures the association has taken to adopt best management practices of lead in shooting ranges as outlined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
“The Nantucket Shooting Park will have designed features built in to control and mitigate lead as recommended by the EPA and other industry organizations,” he said.
“There’s a real difference of opinion about the real health and environmental risks,” said Kathleen Matthews, who owns a summer home on New South Road with her husband, Chris. “We have gotten a letter of analysis from a world-renowned toxicologist who is a pediatric doctor saying that any amount of lead is going to be a real risk and danger...I don’t believe the NHA believes the evidence, the science around the lead risks. They don’t see that as a real risk.” In addition to the letter written by Dr. Alan D. Woolf, the medical director of the Pediatric Environmental Health Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, the opposition also gained support from Senator Ed Markey.
Outside of their concerns surrounding lead, the opposition also fears a sharp influx of “gun tourism” to the island that they say the shooting park might not only promote, but require in order to be financially solvent. “The Nantucket Hunting Association has zero, zero, experience running a business, let alone a shooting park,” said Marci. “Their original plan called for a form of gun tourism because there aren’t enough gun owners on Nantucket to run a viable operation. Our concern is that they’re going to have to network and attract people off island to come to this island, carrying guns, in various ways and forms, which then can lead to the results that we’re seeing nationally and tragically, in even Japan.”
The association rejects the notion that the facility will attract gun tourism. “This facility will not offer anything different than the multiple ranges available to shooters living off the island,” Holdgate said. “There are probably ranges and gun clubs in every county of every state, so why would someone spend the money to travel to Nantucket just to use the range?” Instead, Holgate and the association’s members view the shooting range in a more local historical context, one in which there was once a small caliber gun range on the second floor of the American Legion Hall as well as clay target shooting at the Navy Base and off the side of Wauwinet Road.
“Many longtime residents recite stories of going to the dumps, including the Sconset dump, to shoot rats illuminated by car headlights,” Holdgate described. “There was a time when high school students would walk to school with a shotgun to hunt on the way, check their gun in at the principal’s office until school was over, and then hunt on the way home.” While Holdgate admitted those days will never return, he believes that the shooting range connects to the historic “country” identity of Nantucketers.
Moreover, Holdgate insisted that the range would also benefit the community outside of the association’s members and other recreational gun enthusiasts. “This range facility will be offered to local town and state law enforcement personnel as well as the U.S. Coast Guard free of charge for training purposes,” he indicated. “The facility will be an improvement to what law enforcement has for an on-island range today. This will reduce the amount of travel off island for qualification training. Boy Scout and Girl Scout programs will also be able to utilize this range as well.”
With the range continuing to gain traction, particularly after the Town Meeting vote, the opposition has pushed for a compromise of making the shooting park entirely indoors, which would address their concerns surrounding lead and noise. “The challenge is expense,” said Marci, “but we have collectively offered to offset that through fundraising.” With pledges already in place of up to six figures, the opposition said they reached out to the association after the Town Meeting vote to continue a dialogue about an indoor range, but both parties had failed to meet as of press time. “All options are on the table, including more legal action,” said Marci, indicating that the money pledged for supporting an indoor range could also be allocated to wage future legal battles. “If they don’t pursue an indoor range, they should expect legal action.”
With the opposition made up of primarily seasonal residents who are unable to vote in the Town Meeting, legal action has been their only effective means of defense. With that in mind, the opposition also believes that the recent Town Meeting vote approving the lease does not accurately reflect how the island actually views this issue, indicating that their group represents between three hundred and five hundred concerned citizens who have voiced support of their opposition.
Though this debate over the shooting range has been unfolding over the last two decades, it has become particularly highly charged in more recent years in the context of national gun violence. “There were protesters with signs indicating that if the range is built, there will be bullets raining down from the sky,” described Holdgate. “One looked at me during a permit hearing and said the blood will be on my hands.” But Holdgate says that the range will improve gun safety by helping eliminate the unauthorized target practice happening elsewhere on the island where the possibility of stray bullets harming individuals is much higher. “Law-abiding gun owners need a safe place to use their guns,” Holdgate said. “A safe, clean and well-organized shooting range no longer exists on Nantucket. Gun owners should not be expected to have to travel off the island every time they want to use their firearms.”
If the range is not strictly indoors, the opposition argues that the noise of gunshots will do more than just violate noise variations. “In the context of gun violence today, the sounds of guns going off is very much a—and I hate to use this word, but it’s the appropriate word—it’s a triggering experience,” said Kathleen Matthews. “Every day you have dozens of kids riding their bicycles down Russell’s Way parallel to where this shooting park is going to be with Strong Wings [Adventure School]. You have families coming down this area to go to the beach. And at any given time, you have the sound of gunfire going off in the current day and age where gun violence is very real. I think that is a new context for all of this.”
When it comes to division on the subject of guns, Nantucket is no different than the rest of the country. This is an issue that is passionate on both sides. Time will tell whether Nantucket can find common ground, quite literally, with these twenty-seven acres out by the airport. Whether the county can find a similar compromise is truly a shot in the dark.
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