From: Wayne Dougherty #0 @1:231/110 via 1:3634/38 FIDOnet
Re: Mich. Militia, Camp Grayling, DCM (1)
 
0AREA:AEN_NEWS
0MSGID: 1:231/110 3f930114
Washington Post
May 5, 1995
p A12

THE OKLAHOMA CITY FEDERAL BUILDING BOMBING
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Militia Members Ejected From Military Shooting Range

By Guy Gugliotta and Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writers

  Armed members of a Michigan paramilitary group were allowed
to enter a National Guard base to use its firing range last weekend
because of their membership in a federally funded gun club but were
ordered to leave after their identity became known.
  National Guard spokesman Maj. Jim McCrone said the group
obtained permission to use the range at Camp Grayling after notifying
the camp that their gun club, Competitive Sportsman, was an affiliate
of the federally funded Civilian Marksmanship Program, which sponsors
1,200 shooting clubs across the country.
  The Marksmanship program has been sharply criticized in the
aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing for potentially endangering
military personnel and for giving paramilitary groups access to
military bases.
  Yesterday, Sens. Frank R. Lautenberg (D-N.J.) and Dianne
Feinstein (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to kill the program,
already threatened by a similar House bill. Lautenberg said tax
dollars should not be "used to train people who pose a threat to
law-abiding citizens."
  But Rep. Paul E. Gillmor (R-Ohio), whose district benefits from
a program-sponsored shooting contest, defended it yesterday, saying
that "any link opponents try to draw" between it and the Oklahoma
City bombing "is comparable to linking Olympic boxing with hoodlum
street fighting."
  The program costs $2.5 million per year and is run by the Army.
Besides club sponsorship, it lends and sells surplus .22 and
.30-caliber firearms to the clubs and donates 40 million rounds
of free ammunition to youth organizations, including the clubs.
To become an affiliate, a shooting club must have a youth program
with at least 10 members between the ages of 10 and 20. Club leaders
must be cleared through the FBI.
  The program also has a close working relationship with the
National Rifle Association, with whom it holds concurrent shooting
championships at Camp Perry, in Gillmor's district.
  Defense Department sources said that the program serves no defense
purpose, and their neither the department nor the Army would object
to terminating it. Still, it can be ended only by a specific act of
Congress.
  There is no evidence that the program trains militiamen, and
militia groups "by policy" cannot become program affiliates, Defense
Department Spokesman Dennis R. Boxx has said. But Boxx also
acknowledged that bases by law allow civilians to use their shooting
ranges, and some civilians might belong to militias.
  In last weekend's Camp Grayling incident, Art Bean, who identified
himself as the leader of Competitive Sportsman, said almost all club
members also belong to the paramilitary Tuscola County Militia and
that the two organizations were virtually the same. Bean said he
commanded both the club and the militia.
  Bean said that base officials had violated the group's civil rights
by throwing them off the range. The Army says regulations forbid
paramilitary groups from training on U.S. bases.
  The Tuscola militia headquarters in Caro, Mich., is about 10 miles
northwest of Decker, Mich., where Timothy James McVeigh, arrested in
the April 19 federal building bombing, is alleged to have lived for
a short time and experimented with explosives.
  In addition to Competitive Sportsman, another of Michigan's 51
participating program affiliates, the Flushing Rifle and Gun Club,
of Genessee County, 60 miles north of Detroit, had sent members to
shoot at Camp Grayling twice in the past year, The Washington Post
has learned. Flushing club spokesman Paul Hayes said "there's a lot
of shooters that are members of militias."
  But Competitive Sportsman is the first club to claim that its members
and the militia are one and the same, and that membership in the
militia carried Marksmanship Program status: "They overlap all over,"
Bean said. "The Michigan Militia of Tuscola County is a [Civilian
Marksmanship Program] group 哪 anybody who wants to become a
[marksmanship program] member is a member.
  "When you obey the law you cannot be discriminated against," Bean
said of the Grayling incident. "We were totally within our rights,"
he added, while the base commander's "opinion was the Competitive
Sportsman club was a front for the Michigan Militia.
  "He's going to pay for his opinion; he broke the law," Bean said.
Depending on "how upset he gets us," Bean said, the militia may try
to pursue legal measures against him.
  McCrone said the 147,000-acre base, about 200 miles northwest of
Detroit, opens its shooting ranges periodically to a broad array of
civilian organizations, including Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, 4-H Clubs,
law enforcement organizations and even a musket-shooting club.
  McCrone said a representative of the Caro group got permission
to shoot at Grayling by approaching range officer Lt. Col. Gary
McConnell last Friday and presenting his Marksmanship Program
affiliate number, "56132" denoting the Competitive Sportsman club.
McConnell verified the affiliation, McCrone said.
  The next day 11 members of the group, none of them children or
teenagers, appeared at the range carrying weapons and wearing
fatigues with rank insignia and shoulder patches reading "Southern
Michigan Militia."
  McCrone said McConnell approached the leader, who identified
himself as a member of a Civilian Marksmanship affiliate and claimed
to have a right to shoot there. Bean said he was at the base.
  McCrone said McConnell then told the militiamen that regulations
did not allow paramilitary organizations to "train" at Camp Grayling,
and asked them to leave. "So they left," McCrone said.


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