Hello
My name is Keith Harmon Snow and I am appealing to your empathy, compassion, kindness, generosity and concern for social justice to help my family and I recover from the financial burden of standing up to unregulated, uncontrolled, excessive gunfire and weapons activities in our local farm community.
Over the past decade we and our good neighbors have been engaged in a social justice struggle to try to take back the peace and quiet and to live without fear, anxiety, distress and trauma -- caused by constant excessive weapons use and explosions -- in our neighborhood in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.
I am specifically appealing to you to please help my family and I raise about $8000 that includes recovering funds spend spent on legal fees to support a local Zoning struggle from June to December 2015. While the legal fees have all been paid, my family and I face commitments to repay the loans that were used to do so.
The struggle for peace and security culminated in a major Zoning Board of Appeals decision (in favor of our community) on 12 December 2015. In this decision the ZBA ordered:
- no shooting automatic or semi-automatic weapons made after 1953;
- no shooting assault or military grade weapons made after 1953;
- no shooting without the presence of a landowner;
- no shooting before 9:00 AM or after 6:00 PM;
- no shooting for more than four hours at a time on any given day.
The Zoning Board also ruled that this "shooting range" is not a shooting range at all, but an informal field where shooting occurs, and it is therefore subject to local bylaws and is NOT protected by Mass General Laws that immunize formal shooting ranges from noise complaints.
I also took a leading role over the summer in the our community struggle to shut down an illegal manufacturing facility where more automatic and assault weapons firing (some of the same people, and others) was disrupting our lives and destroying our ability to live in peace, quiet and without fear. The two properties are within 1/2 mile of each other and situated on both sides of my family's and other neighbor's land. This prolonged effort from February to Augist 2015 further disrupted my ability to pursue gainful self-employment and added to the high stress and psychological and emotional cost of living here.
HISTORY OF ESCALATION AND EXCESSIVE SHOOTING
Over the past ten years my family and I, and many other neighbors, have been involved in a struggle for enforcement of local town zoning bylaws meant to protect the rural character of our town and regulate against nuisance activities such as those we face: gunfire, explosions and mercenary activities on our neighbor’s land.
My ancestors arrived in Williamsburg Mass in the late 1600’s and by 1800 they were established on a small homestead where my grandfather, his siblings, his mother and her siblings, were all born. In 2008 I built my home on a seven-acre field carved from the family homestead. This field abuts a 146 acre parcel of forest, river and wetlands where shooting had typically occurred for a few hours on a Sunday morning, one or two Sundays a month, and often on the fourth of July, mostly in the summer, for decades.
No one could have foreseen the escalation of shooting that would become horrible and unbearable by 2010 and this just 300 yards from our back door. My family and I, and other neighbors, have had to flee our homes, abandon our gardens, and endure excessive unregulated gunfire for years now.
From 2004 on the landowners of the abutting parcel began to escalate the shooting and explosions, and by 2010 there were two private military companies shooting, testing and selling high-power semi-automatic and automatic weapons, assault rifles, and other guns on the property.
After attempts to negotiate with the landowners failed, and having exhausted all normal channels of action, my 74 year-old mother and another neighbor formally appealed to the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals. My stepfather was at the time suffering from cancer of the nervous system and the excessive heavy gunfire made his last months of life on our family farm in the spring and summer of 2010 unbearable.
ZONING BOARD OF APPEALS HEARINGS IN 2011 and 2015
These ZBA appeals sought relief from excessive noise (shooting and explosions) and environmental damage (lead in the wetlands) and called on the Zoning Board to overturn the Enforcement Officer’s decision to take no action of enforcement against the egregious violations. Some 80 neighbors and former neighbors signed a petition calling for relief from the noise, regulation of the “shooting range”, and controls for public safety, and more than 30 letters were submitted by abutters and neighbors, some of whom were forced to flee their homes when shooting started, others whose horses were severely distressed by the automatic weapons. (My 77 year-old father, a veteran of the Korean War era, is unable to visit my family when the shooting is going on due to his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.)
In February 2011 the Zoning Board of Appeals held a public hearing heavily attended by neighbors who were distressed by the shooting. The ZBA issued a decision requiring enforcement and setting some parameters around the “shooting range”: prohibiting automatic weapons; prohibiting commercial gun dealers and private military companies from shooting or selling weapons on the neighboring property; and prohibiting all large groups (town police, state police, environmental officers, DEA, paramilitary trainers, F.B.I., etc.) from shooting there.
In the summer of 2011 (the ZBA decision was in February and their cease and desist order was issued in March 2011) the shooters violated the order and were fined.
(Meanwhile, by the fall of 2013 the neighbors on the OTHER side of our local community -- who were also operating a manufacturing facility without any of the required permits and without concern for the environement or noise in the neighborhood -- began shooting assault weapons into their closest neighbor's property and sounding off other nuisnace devices. In November 2015 an agreement was reached between lawyers after the neighbor whose property was being trespassed filed a lawsuit in Superior Court; the agreement prohibits all shooting, ever, from this second property.)
After several years of relative quiet, during which time my mother also died (2013), the activities at the "shooting range" escalated again. By the fall of 2014 complaints were being made to the Zoning Enforcement Officer and by June 2015 the shooting and explosions were again out of control at the long-standing "shooting range". When the Zoning Enforcement Officer refused to enforce, in July 2015, the shooters escalated further: shooting in July, August and September 2015 equaled or exceeded 2010-2011 levels.
After many complaints, the Williamsburg Zoning Enforcement Officer on 15 July 2015 refused to enforce the ZBA decision of 2011. It took several weeks to research, write and submit an appeal to the Town Zoning Board of Appeals, with substantial copying costs, filing and other fees, but I wrote the six page appeal in July and early August and submitted it on 13 August 2015.
None of the shooters or landowners lives on the 146 acre tract, shown in orange on the zoning map below: most of the shooters and three of four of the landowners come from out of town (Springfield, Longmeadow, Blandford MA) or out of state (New Hampshire); only one Iandowner lives in my town, and far enough away to be untouched by the egregious shooting and blasting his family subjects us to.
The local police used to shoot and qualify at this "shooting range", and both the town and state police have shown biases in favor of the shooters. There have been 246 complaints to the Enforcement Officer since 2011. The landowners have taken me to court on false charges, placing further burdens on my limited resources.
I presented this colored map at a Zoning Board of Appeals hearing held, after many delays, on 5 November 2015. The red square represents the “shooting range”, which according to the 12 December 2015 decision of the Zoning Board of Appeals, does not meet any of the safety or design standards of a formal shooting range as determined by the National Rifle Association, and hence is not a “shooting range” -- but merely a field (forest, river, marsh and wetlands) where heavy unregulated shooting occurs. The many abutting and neighboring plots colored green and blue are properties whose owners have complained about the excessive shooting.
THE HIGH COSTS OF LIVING WITH GUNFIRE FOR YEARS
The shooters and friends were coming to the neighboring property at will, any day or hour (even at night), all four seasons, and firing weapons and detonating explosives (esp. tannerite, a highly regulated and controlled binary explosive for which they had no permits). The shooting area was unmarked, unsafe, unregulated and uncontrolled. There was no enforcement of the town bylaws, and no one to call when the shooting was out of control.
The struggle to gain some peace and quiet for our community brought harassment and intimidation, and the emotional, psychological and financial toll of dealing with gunfire of this kind and nature is immeasurable. For example, at one point the carcass of a black bear (skinned, decapitated, paws amputated) was dumped near my property. At another point a Facebook page was created specifically to run me out of town.
Many people who are affected by the shooting activities have not spoken out due to the witnessing of intimidation and harassment of those of us who have. People are afraid of assault rifles and people who wield them (as I am). Some neighbor’s children begin crying in distress when the shooting starts; one person was thrown from a horse; and bullets have flown over abutters’ homes, barns, and gardens.
For my self, my family and many neighbors, we have lost a huge chunk of our lives to the struggle to endure amidst egregious violations of our rights as citizens, taxpayers, fathers and mothers, and homeowners. For me this meant time lost from gainful employment and time lost from taking care of our farm. The shooting and explosions have created conflict within our town, our rural community, and within many families. The social and psychological costs are immeasurable, both on the personal and on the community levels.
As stated on 5 November 2015 by one of the Zoning Board of Appeals members: "The burden as citizens to protest is costly (in terms of) time and energy lost just to live, and emotional distress."
This is not about guns per se: I grew up with a gun in my hand and many neighbors opposed to the disturbances are long-time hunters or gun-owners. This is about good neighborliness (or not), and about local zoning bylaws, and about conflicts over land uses and personal "freedoms", and the subjective self-interested interpretation of property “rights” that extend way beyond the boundary of one’s own land to the detriment of one’s neighbors. Mirroring our nation’s political landscape, this is also about the lack of gun control, the power of the National Rifle Association, and a certain gun "culture" that celebrates disrespect (and much worse).
The legal and related costs incurred over the past six months, combined with lost work and income, copying fees and filing fees, exceed $8000. The time spent to prepare was time lost from normal living and from normal employment and income generation. Some people have helped out with short-term loans to cover legal costs, but they need to be reimbursed for their contributions.
ANYTHING YOU CAN OFFER FOR SUPPORT WILL HELP
On behalf of my family, I thank you for reading this and for considering our appeal. I have worked for the past 20 years on social justice causes, mostly on international human rights and environmental concerns, and I want to impress upon you that this is a very important social justice issue for our community, and for many communities in the USA where people are similarly besieged by gunfire -- both legal and illegal, regulated and unregulated. While the 12 December 2015 Zoning Board decision is very favorable to our community, we are already hearing rumors of retaliation. No matter the outcome however, we are stuck with a sizeable financial burden unless you can help us.
My family and I will be very appreciative of any level of support you can offer, and hope that you will consider helping us according to your means, and doing so now. We also ask that you please consider forwarding this campaign link and info to others who you feel may be interested in helping us.
Thank you again, and god bless you.
Keith Harmon Snow
