Shell shock on Peavine III

But some of the land is privately owned, and some is public. Some of the public land is in the city of Reno. Some is maintained by the U.S. Forest Service.

“There’s really a lot involved,” says Captain Doug Gist of the Washoe County Sheriff’s Department. “All that development is suddenly there, and it’s where people have been shooting and riding ATVs for years.”

Still, the law is the law. And in this case, the law says that you can’t use a handgun or a rifle within 5,000 feet of a structure.

But who’s going to measure? And how are recreational gun users going to know when they’re breaking the law?

When I recently visited one of several sites used as shooting ranges on Peavine, it seemed awfully close to homes and schools. My tour guide, James Calkins, a northwest Reno resident who’s leading a passionate crusade to protect the neighborhood from illegal firearm use and from annoying off-road vehicles, cites the distance as 825 yards. That’s 2,473 feet from the nearest building, way too close for comfort and officially illegal. Calkins has collected shell casings from high-powered rifles at the site, guns that send bullets whizzing for miles around.

Gist has also visited the site where casings, beer cans and garbage litter the ground, where a discarded Volkswagen and several battered appliances are used for target practice.

“I don’t know what the exact measurement to the school from where that discarded car is,” Gist says. “I don’t know if it’s within the legal limit or not.”

Gist says he hasn’t seen people shooting in that area, though “obviously people have” been using the site as a shooting range. He knows of no fatalities or injuries over the years from stray bullets being fired into residential areas.

And the sheriff’s department patrols all of these areas as much as it can, he says.

Though Washoe County has set the boundaries for “congested areas,” the boundaries on Peavine were set years ago, before hundreds of new homes brought neighbors to the foot of the mountain. The sheriff’s department, Gist says, is now working with county engineers, folks from the Forest Service and private property owners to set new boundaries based on anticipated buildout of the area. Signs and markers will be posted, and areas on public land will be cleaned up. The sheriff’s department, Gist says, is already stepping up enforcement and education efforts.

“The county code says 5,000 feet from a dwelling, and 5,000 feet is a long way up that mountain,” Gist says. “We’ll have to enforce the law, and if that means moving [recreational shooters] up the mountain, that’s the direction we’ll have to go.”

Gist, a 23-year veteran of the sheriff’s department, says he enjoys the self-satisfaction of helping make things better.

Sometimes that task, though, can get complex.

"We’re working very hard on this," Gist says of the Peavine plan. "Hopefully we’ll see some improvement, some impact in a short time."