CAPE ELIZABETH – Warren Roos likes trap and target shooting.

He owns rifles and handguns.

He seems, in fact, like an ideal member of the National Rifle Association.

But he’s leaving his local rod and gun club over a mandate to join the national organization.

“I think the NRA does some good things, but I part company with them on some of their more extreme beliefs,” said Roos, who has been in the Spurwink Rod & Gun Club for more than 20 years but won’t renew his membership because of a new rule requiring NRA membership.

Roos said his main complaint with the NRA is its lobbying to block laws that would restrict high-capacity ammunition magazines and semi-automatic guns, which he believes are useful only for shooting people.

By contrast, he said, rifles are “sportsmen’s guns and not guns for shooting people.”

Club officials said no other members have objected to the NRA requirement, which was adopted by a membership vote this fall and takes effect Jan. 1. The club has more than 300 members.

Michael Wescott, the club secretary, said members have three months after Jan. 1 to pay their club dues and join the NRA, so Roos will actually be a member until April 1.

Wescott said the club will get benefits if it has 100 percent membership in the NRA, including support for a junior shooting team that the club hopes to form.

The NRA will help the team get into sanctioned shooting competitions, he said, and provide financial aid to buy rifles and jackets for the team. The NRA will also do a safety audit of the club’s shooting range, he said, so it can host competitions.

That audit could also be useful in addressing neighbors’ complaints about shooting at the gun club. Wescott said the club has gotten “numerous complaints” since the nearby Cross Hill neighborhood was developed. He noted that the club operated for decades before the development brought in hundreds of residents.

Joining the NRA should be a no-brainer for members of the Spurwink Rod & Gun Club, Wescott said.

“I’ve been a member of the NRA for most of my life,” he said. “I don’t know why you wouldn’t be, because they speak for your rights.”

But Roos said friends of his have been victims of gun violence — he declined to be specific — so he objects to the NRA’s blanket advocacy of gun ownership rights.

He said he hasn’t been a very active member of the club, but enjoys the occasional chance to shoot and the club’s social aspects.

He worries that if all club members are NRA members, it will suggest that they’re all in sync with the national organization’s viewpoint.

David Trahan, executive director of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine, said he hasn’t heard of any other clubs in the state that require NRA membership, although he believes that many members of gun and hunting clubs probably are members.

Mark Mayon, president of the Spurwink Rod & Gun Club, said he sees the NRA as a “big brother” to help with programs the club couldn’t take on by itself, such as the junior shooting team.

He noted that the NRA offers grants to clubs that have 100 percent of their members enrolled in the NRA. His club will now be able to seek those grants.

“It was a tough thing for many of the club members to decide on,” he said of the new rule, “but at the end of the day … the NRA provides access to a lot of things that, as a small club, we just wouldn’t be able to do on our own.”

Mayon said Roos’ decision to let his membership lapse rather than join the NRA is “unfortunate,” but “with so many members, I can’t make everyone happy.”

Staff Writer Edward D. Murphy can be contacted at 791-6465 or at:

emurphy@pressherald.com

 

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