Hoping to shoot Palma matches at Pemi? Moonbat says "not in my backyard."

[jasons]

http://granitegrok.com/blog/2012/02...-sights-on-pemigewasset-valley-fish-game-club

Presently, The Pemigewasset Valley Fish & Game Club has come under attack from a small group of elitist leftwing progressive anti-gun neighbors and activists. Martha Richards and her gaggle don’t like guns.

 

[Fixxah]

Wow. That hurts to read.

 

[terraformer]

Just a thought, Since the clubs are now spending money on legal fees, Maybe it is now the time to go on the offensive instead of the defensive. You have here Ms. Richards making false and slanderous statements about the club. So now the club should consider bringing suit against her personnally for those statements. being the good guy does not work, we will never win these a**h***s over, so take the fight to them.

NH has a anit-SLAPP statute. It can be used.

 

[terraformer]

Question would be then, Does the "anti-SLAPP Statute" Protect people who are making knowingly False, Malicious and Slanderous statements?

Well, tort does. From the title and what I read at the link (which was not a paragon of clarity) it seemed like the lawsuits were designed to stop an event and prevent the clubs from fighting the anti-gunners efforts in the zoning realm. That is within the wheelhouse of slapp. If it's just false statements, that's tort and not SLAPP.

 

[MisterHappy]

The problem is that it's "assymmetrical warfare" - if you file a suit against a public official, it's likely that the public official's legal costs will be covered by the town (this happened in my town, not too long ago), so the Club will be fighting a person that loses nothing, and if it's being paid for by the town, the club will piss off residents for wasting tax dollars.

I'd think that less-partisan editorials (or mailings) pointing out the lies, damed lies and [false] statistics that the mayor et al are putting out, and why it's bad for the community to listen to her.

Of course, I'm not from that area, and I don't know the details (beyond what was in the link), but were that Grok to be put in the hands of people that are not currently vested in the "discussion", and were I to be characterised as a "sheeple", I'd not be on the Club's side.

Just the point of view of a distant, if not disinterested, observer.

 

[MisterHappy]

My bad - not sure where I got the idea that she was more than a spoon-pounder-with-a-highchair.

It's almost too bad, though....if she's solo, then the Club will be painted as "ganging up" on her.

 

[jasons]

My bad - not sure where I got the idea that she was more than a spoon-pounder-with-a-highchair.

It's almost too bad, though....if she's solo, then the Club will be painted as "ganging up" on her.

She's not solo. Rumor is that the guy who owns the "Common Man" string of restaurants is backing her. I liked that place, but I'll never eat there again.

 

[jasons]

Pemi's 1,000 yard range is DOA for the near future.

Subject: The status of the Pemi's 1,000-yard range project

This note is going out to all of you who responded to a set of questions
I posed about the Pemi Fish and Game’s plans to build a 1,000-yard rifle
range on its grounds in Holderness, NH. Geez, it’s been two years ago or so
now. First, thanks for taking the time to send your thoughts. Second, I
apologize for not sending out updates; things always seemed on the verge of
something notable, and waiting a week or so would allow me to include
something significant. Well, “a couple of weeks” turned into a couple of
months which has turned into a year and a half or more.

Let’s cut to the chase, and then backtrack a little to fill in the
history.

Our request for a variance from the Town of Holderness was denied at the
March, 2012, meeting of the Zoning Board of Appeals. The project is on hold
until we can come up with a plan that will get around this.

To see how we got here, let’s take a step back to January, 2011. We had
been working with an engineering firm (as well as a wetlands scientist and a
surveyor) to come up with a detailed plan for the range layout, and in
January we were pretty much ready to start working on the permits that the
town and state would require.

From the state we’d need an Alteration of Terrain permit for disturbing
over 2+ acres. This is cut-and-dried. We ran a sketch of the range past a
couple of the state folks who would review the project when formally
submitted and they didn’t see any problems. Good so far. But the town okay
was needed first.

From the town, we were told (in an e-mail that seemed awfully casual)
that we would need a use variance. We figured, okay, that’s easy: it should
be a no-brainer because the impact of the new range would be minimal on the
land itself – there’d be no wetlands disturbance at all – and we’d be moving
a good amount of the high power shooting over a half mile farther from the
neighbors. We dutifully prepared the variance and scheduled a hearing with
the town. We went into this thinking that this was going to be easy. That
was a mistake.

Some neighbors showed up at the first hearing, and one even brought a
lawyer. We quickly realized that maybe this wasn’t going to be a simple
matter, and the Club hired a lawyer of its own. The first request our lawyer
put to the town was to ask it to formally decide whether we really needed a
variance in the first place, since he thought we probably didn’t. This is
now the summer of 2011. The town rejected making a decision, claiming that
that informal e-mail back in January had been a formal decision and that we
didn’t appeal it then. An e-mail, to the engineer hired by the club and not
even to any club officer, saying “I think you need a use variance”
apparently constitutes a binding decision. To say we were surprised and
aghast at this would be an understatement.

We still thought that the case for the new range was good, so we pressed
ahead on the variance. It took a number of Zoning Board meetings. We were
“treated” to a variety of objections to the new range, most of which were as
silly as they were irrelevant (“we find beer cans on Beede Road so it must
be Pemi members littering”) or based on irrational fears (“terrorists could
be training at the new range!” … yes, one of our neighbors actually said
that) or based on ignorance about firearms (“they’ll be shooting cannons”
and “the noise” — even from a half mile away — “ will be deafening”). The
usual arguments about traffic, noise, and property values were trotted out.

In the end, the Zoning Board sided with the antis, and our variance
request was denied at the March, 2012, ZBA meeting. Skipping over some
procedural details, this decision left us with the choice of appealing the
decision to NH Superior Court or accepting their decision and dropping the
project. After a serious debate by the Club’s board of directors, it was
decided in July to not appeal. The amount of money involved in an appeal
plus the time and energy that would be required to pursue it — and given the
uncertainty of the outcome — all weighed against going ahead. Everyone on
the board was very disappointed with this outcome no matter what their vote
had been.

We haven’t given up, and there’s a committee chartered by the board to
explore various options. Certainly nothing visible will happen in the short
run, but we will continue to try to correct the half-truths and
exaggerations and to convince neighbors and town officials that it really is
a win-win. Changing the minds of people with strongly held pre-conceived
ideas is a bit of a challenge, though, so this will take time.

If you spread the word, I'd appreciate it.

Oh! By the way, here’s something you might be interested in knowing: One
of our abutters who was instrumental in blocking the variance happens to be
the owner of the Common Man restaurant chain. You might want to consider
whether you want your entertainment dollars ending up in the pockets of an
anti-gunner.


-Randy

 

[terraformer]

When people wonder why Comm2A is so cautious and patient in filling things and why we are so tight lipped, the above story is proof positive why you don't casually tell your opponents what your plans are or make half baked casual requests to those in power. You strike hard when well prepared.