Developer Sues to Shut Down a 75-Year-Old NJ Gun Range by TTAG News Contributor

A members-only shooting range that’s operated in Gloucester Township for more than three-quarters of a century is fighting a lawsuit that could put it out of business — the latest in a long line of pressure that tends to show up right about the time the surrounding land gets valuable.

Iron Horse Rifle & Pistol Club has run rifle, pistol, and archery ranges on the Waddell family’s farmland off Garwood Road, in the township’s Erial section, since the late 1940s. Its neighbors are the newcomers.

As 55-and-older developments like Four Seasons at Forest Meadows rose around it over the past two decades, residents repeatedly pushed the township to restrict or close the range over noise and stray-round complaints — a fight that boiled over into a 2013 homeowner lawsuit and years of township hearings.

Grandfathered in long before the subdivisions arrived, the range kept operating. It’s the same slow squeeze TTAG has documented again and again: a range built out in the country, then hemmed in by houses whose owners decide the guns have to go.

This time the challenge comes from a developer.

The Lawsuit

According to a complaint filed in Camden County Superior Court, Bryn Mawr Garwood LLC — a company New Jersey business records list as newly formed in 2026, with Pennsylvania real-estate attorney Harvey Sternberg as its principal — is suing the entity that runs the range, Iron Horse R&R LLC.

The suit rests on environmental allegations: that the range has engaged in “solid waste disposal and soil stockpiling” and hauled stockpiles, asphalt millings, construction debris, and “potentially contaminated soil, from unknown sources” onto the adjoining property.

The complaint’s own hedging stands out. “Potentially contaminated” recurs throughout, and the filing concedes the soil at issue “has not been tested.” For a case premised on contamination, that’s a conspicuous gap — a basic lead screen runs about $18 at the Rutgers Soil Testing Laboratory, with a fuller workup running a few thousand.

The Range’s Response

A Familiar Playbook

However this shakes out, the shape is one gun owners know well. Ranges rarely die by a dramatic vote; they get zoned, sued, and studied out of existence, usually because they lack the money to outlast the litigation even when they’d ultimately win.

Many states have responded with range-protection statutes that shield grandfathered ranges from exactly these nuisance-and-zoning plays — New Jersey’s protections are thinner than most. Public campaign-finance records filed with NJ ELEC can establish whether, and how much, the plaintiff has given to local officials; that’s worth reporting as a plain fact, without asserting a connection the record doesn’t prove.

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There is actually a legal concept that addresses this: “coming to the nuisance.”

If a lawful use of property existed before you purchased neighboring property, the fact that you later find that existing use objectionable does not automatically give you the right to force it to change or shut down.

The classic example is buying a home next to an existing farm and then complaining about the noise, odors, equipment, or livestock.

The fact that the farm was already there and that you knew or reasonably should have known about its operations when you purchased the property is highly relevant in a nuisance dispute.

The same principle applies to an established shooting range.

If the range was lawfully operating before you purchased the neighboring property, its existence and the ordinary noise associated with its operation were conditions you knew, or reasonably should have known, existed when you chose to buy there.

In legal terms, “coming to the nuisance” is not an absolute defense in every jurisdiction or under every set of facts. A property owner generally cannot use it as permission to substantially expand, materially change, or unlawfully operate a nuisance.

But that’s very different from knowingly purchasing property next to a pre-existing, lawfully operating range and then demanding that the range alter or cease the same type of operation that existed when you bought the property.

Put simply: you bought next to the range; the range didn’t move in next to you. The law can take that distinction seriously.

*Except this is New Jersey  and a lot of money is riding on this “development”. So I am willing to bet  that the fix is already in with the powers that be. But then I am a born again cynic about these things. Grumpy*