Butler County gun range owner on year-long legal battle: ‘I just wish they would have listened to me’

A St. Clair Twp. lawsuit against a local gun range has been dismissed, but the owner might now sue the township for alleged harassment.

After a bullet allegedly flew five feet from 88-year-old Berneice Wright’s face last spring while she was watching television in her living room, the township passed an emergency resolution to temporarily shut down the shooting range at Lake Bailee Recreational Park & Gun Range.

The trustees subsequently filed an action in Butler County Common Pleas Court, seeking a permanent injunction to force the owner of the gun range to take safety precautions.

Court documents filed by the township say Lake Bailee owner Jesse Von Stein installed baffles to provide “blue sky protection,” raised the backstop to more than 30 feet and “has modified conditions on the range to make it safer and will continue to make improvements in the future so that no danger to the public will be created.”

The lawsuit moved forward despite a judge’s ruling there wasn’t enough evidence showing Von Stein’s range was the culprit in the Wright incident.

Judge Jennifer Muench-McElfresh said she sympathized with the neighbors near the shooting range on Gephart Road but did not find strong enough evidence to blame the shooting range during a hearing on a temporary restraining order last year.

Von Stein said the township dismissed the suit against him because more houses were struck by bullets after he installed the baffles. He said that proves his range wasn’t at fault, and he told the township it was impossible for bullets to fly a mile away.

Now Von Stein said he is working on filing a lawsuit against the township in federal court for depriving him of his rights under the Constitution.

“I hate to sound like a bad guy cause I’m not, I love everybody,” Von Stein told the Journal-News. “I just wish they would have listened to me, you could have solved the problem, kept people safe.”

St. Clair Trustee John Snyder said the trustees ended the court battle because they couldn’t “absolutely prove” the bullets came from Lake Bailee. He said there has been at least one house hit since Von Stein made improvements, but that is irrelevant to the dismissal.

“Jesse can do whatever he wants to do, the fact of the matter is we were reacting to our community and trying to do the right thing,” Snyder said about the lawsuit threat. “Common sense told us houses are getting hit, multiple houses that are directly behind a gun range, so our opinion was there was something that needed to be done… He has made some improvements, we’ve taken that as a win because that’s what we wanted to accomplish in the beginning.”

Townships have little power to restrict the use of firearms on private property. Cities, meanwhile, have ordinances prohibiting the discharge of weapons within city limits, except under special circumstances like self-defense.

MORE: Close calls prompt Butler County official to propose gun law changes

After a Liberty Twp. mom and her kids had a too-close-for-comfort experience with errant bullets at Cherokee Park last year, Trustee Tom Farrell launched an effort to either convince the legislature to give townships more muscle in this regard or to educate residents on the proper use of firearms on their property.

A report from the Ohio Township Association notes: “Under (state law), there is no expressly permitted or inherently implied, authority for a township to regulate the discharge of a firearm.”

Farrell contacted Ohio Sen. Bill Coley, a Republican from Liberty Twp., about the issue. Coley said at the time there were about a dozen gun bills in his committee and he planned to find one that might be an appropriate vehicle for the reforms Farrell was requesting.

Farrell hasn’t heard any updates on the issue. Coley couldn’t be reached for comment.

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