It's a different world than it was 30 years ago, when the home nearest the Lions Club shooting range was almost a mile away.
Now, development has encroached within 500 yards of the range, and nearby residents want the shooters out of there."You come home and want to sit out, but you can't because of the noise," said Northridge Drive resident Farrell Bell. "At 9:30 last night it was like we were on a battlefront - just bing-bing-bing, like that."
The shooting range is located in the Bountiful foothills, not far from the "B."
Bell and others who have moved in during the past few years have periodically complained about the range to no avail, but now their wish may come true.
The Lions Club's 20-year U.S. Forest Service special use permit expires this year, and the Forest Service is requiring the Lions to come up with $10,000 to $15,000 plus a year's worth of user fees to renew it. The Lions say they can't come up with that kind of cash.
Bountiful City and legislative officials have intervened in support of the range, proposing a land swap making the range city land and skirting a required environmental impact study. Negotiations are ongoing.
"We've just been kind of waiting to see what will happen," said Michael Seig, district ranger for the Forest Service's Salt Lake Ranger District.
In the meantime, residents are seizing the moment by circulating a petition they plan to present to the City Council.
Range opponents cite noise, traffic, environmental impact and safety concerns. Last summer a tracer bullet on the range sparked a 40-acre brush fire, and Bell said he was hit several times one day last spring by shotgun pellets.
But range officials and Bountiful police point out that both those events were caused by people acting illegally. Tracer bullets are outlawed in Utah, and Bell's shotgun pellets came from people shooting at clay pigeons outside the range's boundaries.
Nearby residents aren't the only ones who can hear shooting. Sometimes, especially during events such as the annual Thanksgiving turkey shoot, the guns can be heard throughout Bountiful.
Bountiful's police firearms instructor, Sgt. Roger Green, dismisses the residents' complaints with the simple observation that the range was there first - and that residents knew what they were getting into.
"They shouldn't have moved there, should they?" he said. "It's kind of like residents building a house next to an airport runway and then complaining about the noise."
But resident Larry Jenkins said he didn't know about the range before he moved in. He's not against guns, he said - he just thinks there are better places for the range given modern realities. Bountiful is no longer a bucolic rural community - it's a large Salt Lake suburb that has undergone booming growth.
Even so, Bountiful city engineer Jack Balling said there is no other place for the range. It's the only one in south Davis County.
"There are a lot of people who use it - it's a great asset to the community," he said. "I don't know where else you would put it."
Range master Keith Crandall has faithfully supervised the range three days a week for years. He shows visitors the berms, the targets, the traps with pride. He says the range was used almost 13,000 times last year by individuals and organizations including the Boy Scouts, hunter safety classes and the Bountiful, North Salt Lake, West Bountiful and Woods Cross police departments.
"I moved down on 350 West by the railroad tracks," he said. "Now can I say I don't like the noise? No way."