The Pine Journal (Carlton County’s newspaper, MN) reports on a County Board meeting that was considering a paintball field proposal.
Despite the approval of the County Planning Commission and with 8 special conditions attached (including no more than 16 participants at a time and hours restricted to Monday thru Saturday) the concerns voiced at the meeting are, shall we say, ‘stone age’.
Here’s a couple of excerpts:
“With violence at an all-time high, I have a problem with anything that encourages young people to shoot at each other.” Commissioner Pihlman
“I was a firearms instructor myself, and we are supposed to teach kids to shoot guns in safe directions and not at each other.” Neighbor Polo.
The proposal went through, but – yeesh!
Read it here
The opinions of the boardmembers is one of the reasons I dislike the ‘milsim’ portion of the paintball market. People see a Rap4 ad with a guy looking like a SWAT team member with a marker that looks like an M16, and that is their perception of what the sport is. I don’t like having to do the PC thing, but I also understand that people with limited knowledge and misconceptions are the ones who are serving on town councils.
Though this is a “victory,” it is obvious they have put such a spin and conditions on the circumstances of legal operation, that is not only discourages improvement, but literally makes success illegal.
Unfortunately its not a new battle, new fields, and those fields that survived the real estate bubble and collapse, now face local board Nazis trying to institute restrictions, enforce out dated codes, change land use codes, and other such tactics. Central Florida paintball in Lake-land Florida is one of these entering a fight.I am certain there are others, all players need to show their support for these fields. It doesn’t matter if the fields are local to you, or thousands of miles away. a letter of support to the field owners is all it takes.
-Maverick