Shooting Range

The last target-shooting area open free to the public in the Saugus district of Angeles National Forest closed Wednesday, a victim of high maintenance costs brought about by the illegal acts of some of its users. Jim McGauley, a U.S. Forest Service district assistant recreation officer, said the Dry Gulch shooting range in recent years had been turned into a dumping ground by shooters who brought everything from mannequins to television sets to the area to use for target practice.

OAKLAND - The doors opened near the end of the Lakers' shoot-around, revealing the surprise of the day: Dwight Howard shooting mid-range jumpers. From 14 feet, 16, and a few from 18 feet. He needs to keep working on it. His 16-foot bank shot was too hard off the backboard early in Monday's game against Golden State. His 15-footer from the left elbow was way off the mark a minute later. He finished with 11 points on four-for-eight shooting in the Lakers' 109-103 loss. "We want to just expand his game all over," Lakers Coach Mike D'Antoni said beforehand.

Re "Homes on the Range," Nov. 19. I would wager that the shooting range was in place before these complainers moved in. What did they expect? If they did not want the noise, they should not have moved there. There are a lot of other places to live in Ventura. Closing or moving the range makes no more sense than closing or moving Highway 101 because there is traffic noise. Is it possible that the property values were lower because of the range and these people would like to reap a windfall by closing it?

DEER TRAIL, Colo. -- When Glenn Rotkovich reviewed the application from an Aurora, Colo., resident to become a member of the shooting range he runs out on the remote prairies east of town, he made a routine telephone call to invite the applicant for a personal orientation. But what he heard was anything but routine, he said of the June call. The applicant was James Holmes -- a name that didn't ring any bells, since it was weeks before the theater shooting in Aurora. But the message on Holmes' answering machine unsettled Rotkovich.

The U.S. Forest Service is soliciting public comment on a proposal to allow gun enthusiasts to expand a shooting range in a remote canyon area in Los Padres National Forest. Prior to renewing the Ojai Valley Gun Club's current permit to use a 57-acre range off Rose Valley Road, the Forest Service plans to do an environmental impact report.

A discussion of options for the city's unsettled shooting range has been rescheduled for this Monday's City Council meeting. About a dozen concerned residents, mostly local National Rifle Assn. members, waited for 4 1/2 hours at last week's council meeting while council members discussed another issue. The council apologized to the audience, but adjourned the meeting at 11:30 p.m. rather than start the range talks then. The Huntington Beach Police Officers Assn.

The lower part of his left leg can serve as an inspiration for Dennis Rodman's hairdresser--"an ankle that looks like a rainbow, with all those colors," Coach Del Harris said--but Travis Knight plays on. Actually, he does more than that.

Darren Collison doesn't surprise himself a lot. He expected to step immediately into the UCLA point guard job vacated by Jordan Farmar and run the Bruins. He expected to be the kind of harassing defender that makes opposing coaches yell at the game film beforehand and congratulate Collison afterward on his long arms and active defensive presence. Collison did not, however, expect to be leading the Pacific 10 Conference in three-point shooting percentage in league games.

Mike Boyd and his wife, Ruth Christy, moved to this quiet, sidewalk-lined Midway City neighborhood 18 years ago, attracted to what they call an "old-fashioned" place to live. But Boyd, 73, and a handful of other residents are up in arms about a proposed 6,380-square-foot indoor gun range in their neighborhood, an unincorporated area of Orange County that borders Westminster. Residents say the range would destroy their quiet, their property values and their peace of mind. "I'm not opposed to a shooting range," Boyd said.

City officials say they will push ahead with plans to clean up a contaminated shooting range near Horseshoe Lake. State approval is expected in February or March for the $1.6-million project, which is to be completed by May, according to the city's consulting firm, EMKO of El Dorado Hills. Soil surrounding the shooting range is contaminated with lead and other toxic residue from shattered trap targets, analysts say.

Barley Pop Bill showed no mercy. Those outlaws were fixing to steal his beer, and he went vigilante, blasting away with his double-barreled shotgun. Not satisfied, he drew his twin Ruger Old Army revolvers and riddled the outlaws with lead. As the smoke cleared, he smiled. Weren't nobody in Orefield, Pa., who'd be taking that brew bucket. Most friends call him Dale Green. Most people also pass their weekends in more sedate pursuits. But Green was spending his Sunday here at Guthsville Rod & Gun Club in eastern Pennsylvania, dressed from head to toe as a gunslinger of the Old West, sharing pistol smoke with 50 others doing exactly the same thing.

I come from a country that has been at war for as long as I've been alive, but I had never touched a gun until I came to Los Angeles. As a 30-year-old Afghan, I'd seen plenty of guns: the Soviet soldiers with their AK-47s, the nervous American kids pointing their weapons at you, ready to shoot, thinking everyone around them is a bomber. But here in Los Angeles, visiting on a five-month journalism fellowship, I was the one doing the shooting. For fun! America, I discovered, is a land of freedom.

The scheduled auction of a handwritten account by Sirhan Sirhan of his actions before the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was blocked Tuesday by the convicted killer's attorney. Lawyer William Pepper said the purported description of Sirhan's visit to the Ambassador Hotel where Kennedy was gunned down may be "significant evidence" in an ongoing effort to win parole for the Pleasant Valley State Prison inmate, now 67. The online auction of the documents, written on a yellow legal pad and accompanied by a sketch that depicts areas of the Los Angeles hotel that Sirhan walked through, had been planned for Tuesday afternoon.

Law enforcement officials had only begun their examination of a Tucson supermarket scene where Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and 17 others were shot Saturday when many on the political left settled on a culprit: overheated political rhetoric. Even before the name of the shooter was known, a fierce debate spilled out across blogs and social media, with liberal commentators blaming the attack on the violent imagery evoked by some "tea party" candidates and conservatives during the recent midterm elections.

Long Beach police had ample time to identify themselves before shooting and killing a 35-year-old man holding a water nozzle, according to the findings of an investigation by the family's attorney. Police fatally shot Douglas Zerby, 35, on Sunday when they believed he posed a threat to their safety. Zerby was carrying a metal-tipped water nozzle and pointed it at officers, authorities said. They believed it to be a gun. FOR THE RECORD: Long Beach shooting: An article in the Dec. 18 LATExtra section about the shooting of Long Beach resident Douglas Zerby by police said that officers ordered Zerby to drop his weapon, which was actually a pistol-grip water nozzle.

Mike Boyd and his wife, Ruth Christy, moved to this quiet, sidewalk-lined Midway City neighborhood 18 years ago, attracted to what they call an "old-fashioned" place to live. But Boyd, 73, and a handful of other residents are up in arms about a proposed 6,380-square-foot indoor gun range in their neighborhood, an unincorporated area of Orange County that borders Westminster. Residents say the range would destroy their quiet, their property values and their peace of mind. "I'm not opposed to a shooting range," Boyd said.

A 16-year-old boy was killed at a shooting range when his companion accidentally shot him in the head, authorities said Sunday. The victim's name was withheld until relatives could be notified. He and his friend were at the Kentucky Canyon Shooting Range in the Angeles National Forest south of Palmdale when the accident happened Saturday about 1:50 p.m., Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Bill Linnemeyer said.

For five decades, shotgun enthusiasts were able to visit the Miramar military base for target practice and skeet shooting. In 2008, 95,000 rounds were fired by members and guests of the San Diego Shotgun Sports Assn., which ran a 29-acre range on the base. Now the military has closed the facility out of concern for the toxic contamination caused by years of lead shotgun pellets landing in a 13-acre "overshot" area next to the range. The issue has provoked an unusual clash between the Marine Corps and possibly its biggest supporter in Congress, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Alpine)

Authorities are investigating whether an early morning fire Monday at a Hemet police shooting range was yet another attack on the department, which has been hit with repeated booby traps over the last three months. The fire at the remote training facility off Warren Road broke out shortly after 2 a.m. Much of the building was destroyed in the blaze. "In light [of] the incidents involving our department over the past three months, we are investigating the possibility that this is related, but we will not speculate at this point until the investigators are able to complete their work," said Hemet Police Capt.