Gun club looking
down a barrel

By William Kenny
Times Staff Writer

When someone attempts to buy a gun in Pennsylvania, state law requires the dealer to contact state police for a background check of the purchaser. But there’s no law requiring the buyer to know the first thing about handling the weapon.
As a result, firearm users must take it upon themselves to learn safety and proficiency with their weapons.
At the end of this year, Philadelphia will lose a facility where thousands of civilian gun owners have been learning and practicing those lessons for almost eight decades.
Last month, the city informed leaders of the Holmesburg Fish and Game Protective Association that they will have to vacate the club’s outdoor and indoor shooting ranges on Pennypack Street by Dec. 31.
The city owns the three-acre tract east of State Road adjacent to the Philadelphia Police and Philadelphia Fire academies and reportedly wants to utilize it as a full-time training ground for Philadelphia Prison System corrections officers.
Leaders of the 1,400-member civilian sportsman’s group — commonly referred to as the Holmesburg Gun Club — are trying to lobby city officials for a compromise that would enable them to continue using the facility, which they say is the last outdoor civilian shooting range left in Philadelphia.
But they are skeptical of a reprieve and fear for the survival of their independent non-profit organization.
"This is the only place in the city of Philadelphia where law-abiding citizens can legally shoot firearms without causing any problems to the community," said Carmen Cancelliere, 79, a member of the club since the 1950s and its serving membership chairman.
The club was already more than 20 years old by the time Cancelliere got involved. Ironically, its history is largely intertwined with that of city government.
In 1930, a 25-year-old public works employee named Samuel S. Baxter got together with several fellow firearms enthusiasts to form the informal organization which later became the chartered club.
"He was an avid trap shooter, so he and a couple of guys from other clubs decided they wanted to start their own," Cancelliere said. "The Police Academy wasn’t here at the time. It was the boondocks. The only thing here was Holmesburg Prison, and that’s over on Torresdale Avenue."
Baxter later became Philadelphia’s first water commissioner. The city’s drinking water treatment plant along the Delaware River near the gun club bears his name.
A few years after its creation, the club agreed to a century-long lease with the city for the nominal fee of $1 a year. Members built a brick clubhouse and a cinderblock indoor pistol range, as well as a 100-yard rifle range, a 50-yard pistol range and a trap/skeet field outdoors.
"It was an open piece of ground when we first got it," said club president Patrick Clark. "We built the clubhouse and everything else."
Among the current membership are many police officers, firefighters and other public safety professionals, but there are countless other professions represented. For example, Dr. John A. Mattiacci, the dean of the Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine, is a longtime member, as is his counterpart at Temple’s School of Pharmacy.
"A lot of my resident (physicians) were members here," added Mattiacci, a Frankford native. "There are a lot of doctors and lawyers."
Ages of members range from kids as young as 12 to men in their 80s and beyond. Though the club is considered private, it is not exclusive, its leaders claim. Most of the ranges are restricted to members and their guests, but the skeet and trap range is open to the public all the time.
Also, the club holds many events for outsiders, including an annual open house, gun safety instruction programs and visits from youth groups like the Boy Scouts.
Mayfair’s Ryan Heinemann, 21, first visited the club nine years ago with his Boy Scout troop. He’s been with it ever since.
"I thought I was just coming out for hunter safety, and a guy was nice enough to let me shoot. It was a black powder (rifle)," Heinemann said.
"One of the coaches from the junior division came in and told me they shoot every Tuesday night."
Heinemann climbed the ranks of sanctioned youth competitions to earn a "distinguished expert" designation. As a senior shooter, he is a "master" class. He hopes to become a high master.
"I was hoping to be coming here for the next thirty years," he said.
Club dues are $100 a year. An existing member must sponsor each new member. But that’s never a problem, club leaders say, as long as the candidate adheres to the law, club rules and standard safety practices. It also helps to have a passion for target shooting.
With those as its guiding principles, the club thrived quietly for decades, purposely limiting its public profile. Then several years ago, Cancelliere said, the city informed the club that it intended to create an annual renewal provision in the lease. Meanwhile, the prison system was running into a series of problems hindering its officer firearms training.
For many years, the prisons had their own dedicated firing range behind the House of Corrections, east of State Road near the Delaware River, according to Commissioner Leon A. King III. But the system lost the range when the Fairmount Park Commission got the ground for Pennypack on the Delaware Park.
The prison system moved its firearms training to the Police Academy, King said. That lasted a few years before the number of corrections officers outgrew the Police Academy’s capacity.
In 1998, the city exercised its right as detailed in the lease to use the gun club ranges for scheduled corrections officer training days, King said. But the prison system has continued to increase its ranks of officers to meet the demands of a growing inmate population. There are 1,950 officers and supervisors in the department.
In addition to the initial firearms training, King said, each officer must receive annual refresher training and maintain a certain level of proficiency. As a result, the prison system needs its own shooting range once again, according to the commissioner.
Currently, the system’s primary training facility is at the closed-down Holmesburg Prison. But the usable space there is very limited, and shooting is not possible with residential areas nearby.
The only practical option is to take over the gun club, according to King, who maintains that proper corrections officer training is vital to public safety.
"In my mind, it’s a choice between training (officers) in the way they need to be trained and having a private club on public land," the commissioner said.
Some club members aren’t so sure that the prison system really needs what King claims it needs. Corrections officers often don’t show up on their reserved training sessions, leaving the ranges empty on days when members would otherwise use them, said club vice president John Sabo.
Another times, Sabo claimed, officers seem to spend more time socializing and eating lunch than taking target practice. And on at least one occasion, the club leader added, a retired prison officer was allowed to shoot with active officers during a training session.
King agrees that his department hasn’t utilized every scheduled session and doesn’t deny that officers from other departments and retired officers have used the range on prison system time.
"We have cadets that come through the training academy every twelve weeks. Sometimes there’s a lull between classes," King said. "If you go to the Police Academy, you’re not going to find them (shooting) seven days a week, either."
Officers from other law enforcement agencies and retired officers are commonly permitted to use the range when the prison system hosts firearms competitions, the commissioner added.
Once it has full run of the grounds, the prison system plans to expand its firearms and other training programs, King said.
"We haven’t geared up to use the property to its fullest (yet)," he said.
Members of the club figure they’ll soon have to find another place to continue their long-held traditions. The search isn’t going very well amid the vast development that has overtaken the Northeast and its suburbs since the 1930s.
"Where could you go and put up a shooting range in the city?" Cancelliere asked. "It’d be pretty tough. Even outside the city it’d be tough. The clubs that are already there have been in existence for years."
Many folks will miss the camaraderie as much as, if not more than, the shooting.
"There are a lot of people who come here and don’t shoot," Sabo said. "There’s a group of older guys who come here in the morning and sit around and drink their coffee. It’s more like a community center or social club than a gun club. (Members) are disappointed, because if this (facility) goes away, then all of that goes away." ••
Reporter William Kenny can be reached at 215-354-3031 or bkenny@phillynews.com