A Hockinson shooting range investigated after a neighbor was injured by a projectile earlier this year has adequate safety precautions in place, according to a Clark County Sheriff’s Office inspection.
Deputy Pete Muller conducted the inspection of Clark Rifles, 25115 N.E. Rawson Road, reporting that the range met all of the requirements on a safety checklist recently created by the sheriff’s office.
“There was no pre-existing format for these types of things, because the previous administration was not doing range inspections,” Undersheriff Mike Cooke said. “We started from the ground up.”
To create the inspection document, Cooke said, the sheriff’s office worked with staff from the civil division of the Clark County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to create the six components that a shooting range must address to comply with county codes.
Items on the checklist include noting whether barriers are in place, if the people and houses in the area are protected from the direct line of fire and if a safety officer is on duty during range operations. Muller also checked that all range rules are clearly posted, range boundaries are clearly identified and that unauthorized access is prohibited by signs or fences.
Clark Rifles met each safety requirement, according to the report.
The inspection was prompted after emergency crews were called to the house of Linda Sperling, whose property is next door to Clark Rifles, on Jan. 26. Sperling suffered an injury to the head and claimed that it was a stray bullet from the rifle range, which points toward the Sperlings’ property.
Clark County Sheriff’s Office major crimes detectives investigated the incident, but couldn’t find the projectile on the Sperlings’ 5-acre property.
Detectives ultimately concluded that they couldn’t definitively say what the projectile was or if it had come from Clark Rifles. They also said they didn’t find any signs of recklessness, negligence or criminal intent, so the investigation was suspended. The Sperlings say they plan to file a civil suit against the gun club.
During their investigation, however, the sheriff’s office learned that it hadn’t inspected the gun club in 19 years. Clark County code indicates that shooting ranges “shall be subject to periodic re-inspection by the sheriff every five years.”
The sheriff’s office readily admitted the oversight and inspected the range on Feb. 2.
Cooke said that the sheriff’s office plans to inspect two other shooting ranges in unincorporated Clark County. Because they made the simple one-page checklist, Cooke said, any deputy can conduct the safety inspection.
“It was important to us that the document accomplished what the county code required us to do, but didn’t create a situation where we were moving beyond our area of expertise,” Cooke said. “The intent of the county code in having us inspect (the shooting ranges) was to do a site visit and make a very simple examination of whether it appeared to be safe for people who surround the range.”
