Patrick Jones taking bogus lie detector test. He passed.
Shasta County District 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones presented an ambitious plan at Thursday’s Shasta County Planning Commission meeting for a 152-acre outdoor gun range complex and gun club to be built on the Millville Plains 10 miles east of Anderson.
The Planning Commission recommended that the Board of Supervisors approve the undeveloped property’s rezoning/project.
If approved, this could set in motion the construction of the gun store scion’s lifelong dream, a state-of-the-art shooting range in the heart of far northern California.
According to Lio Salazar, Planning Division Manager for the county’s Department of Resource Management, although a date for a Board hearing on whether to approve the rezoning/project has not yet been set, his department anticipates it would appear on a May meeting agenda.
However, Salazar noted that when the plan does goes before the Board, it’s expected that Jones would recuse himself from participating in the plan’s rezoning decision.
According to the project’s 123-page conceptual development plan, the shooting complex will include “long-rifle firing lines and handgun bays with berms to serve as backstops, clay target trap and skeet shooting ranges, a 4,975-square-foot primary clubhouse with a 3,272-square-foot attached covered patio area and a 1,025-square-foot attached caretaker’s residence, and a 699-square-foot law enforcement clubhouse with a 270-square-foot attached covered patio.”
Jones plan
In addition to operating five days a week, Jones plans to host up to 14 shooting events annually at his gun club, ranging from a dozen smaller contests featuring 30 to 200 shooting enthusiasts, and two larger events with 500 or more contestants. “Shooting sports events may include RV overnight dry camping in a designated parking area,” the plan advises.
Squint a little bit (like Clint) and it’s not hard to see Shasta County becoming the shooting capital of California.
All of which begs the question: Who’s paying the bills for this multimillion-dollar extravaganza?
Certainly it can’t be our humble chairman of the board all on his lonesome. Before assuming his $50,000 county job in 2021, Jones earned his keep pushing iron at Jones Fort, the family gun store that’s become a backdrop for the right-wing renegade supervisor’s media interviews.
Dist. 4 Supervisor Patrick Jones.
Funny thing about that gun store salary. Jones didn’t declare it on the first three statements of economic interests he filed since declaring his candidacy in 2020, as required by state campaign finance law. He didn’t declare his gun store income until March 29 of this year—two weeks before revealing his gun range project to the planning commission.
Why declare his $10,001 to $100,000 per annum gun store salary now? That’s impossible to say for certain, since Jones didn’t reply to a long list of questions I sent him about the shooting range project. Perhaps Jones, with his proposed project hanging in the balance, decided it might be a wise to conform to campaign finance law. Maybe he wants us to think he can pay for the gun club on his own.
Nobody knows but Jones, and he isn’t talking to us. Who can blame him? We’re the only local media organization that regularly calls him to account on his prolific fabrications. Note to public: If you have to film yourself taking a bogus lie detector test to prove you’re telling the truth, as Jones did in the Reverge Anselmo-financed Red, White and Blueprint docuseries, you might be lying.
At any rate, if it was any other local businessman besides the firebrand fascist Jones, we might be celebrating his achievements, instead of dreading his proposed shooting gallery, which is dead-certain to become a right-wing militia hangout eclipsing Woody Clendenen’s staid Cottonwood barbershop.
Proposed law enforcement clubhouse.
Especially ominous is the project’s proposed law enforcement clubhouse, since the local political movement that Jones heads has blurred the distinction between law enforcement officers and unlawful militia members. Instead of emphasizing the difference, Shasta County Sheriff Michael Johnson has entertained confusion by publicly proclaiming fealty to the authoritarian “constitutional sheriff” concept.
The flawed concept incorrectly holds that according to the U.S. constitution, the county sheriff is the supreme law of the land locally and can enforce or not enforce whatever laws he or she (and there are only two genders in this equation) deems fit. This individualistic impulse is seen throughout the MAGA movement as novices become experts on subjects such as voting machines, public health and education.
When it comes to guns and public safety, the data is clear. Despite Republican resistance to studying gun violence, we’ve been conducting an experiment in the United States during the past 30 years or so, as red state after red state, often prodded by Republican politicians financed by the NRA, loosened their firearm restrictions. Contrary to California and a few other holdout states, it’s now legal to openly carry a handgun or a rifle in most states today. In 25 states, it’s now legal to carry a concealed handgun without a permit.
It should come as no surprise that gun violence, injuries and deaths have increased in states that have relaxed restrictions on carrying firearms in public. According to this study, weaker gun laws led to increases in the rate of homicides, suicides and accidental deaths. In this study by the Center for American Progress, weaker gun laws led to increases in violent crime, road rage incidents and individuals solving public disputes with legally carried firearms.
It’s pretty clear. More guns equal more carnage.
Make no mistake, more guns are coming, thanks to the Trump-packed Supreme Court’s Bruen decision last summer, which basically eviscerated local, state and federal government’s ability to protect its citizens from gun violence. According to the decision authored by corrupt constitutional originalist Clarence Thomas, the 2nd Amendment forbids regulating guns to protect the public’s wellbeing.
That’s the upside down bizarro world we’re living in right now, where local right-wing gadflies Rich Gallardo and Mark Baird stand a chance of winning their longstanding case against the state attorney general to openly carry firearms throughout California.
Where crypto-Christian nationalist ne’er-do-wells like Shasta County District 1 Supervisor Kevin Crye simultaneously gain political power and fat government contracts.
Where politicians like Patrick Henry Jones push 2nd Amendment resolutions from behind the counter at Jones Fort, even as he’s planning a multimillion-dollar gun range complex and gun club, and the county counsel says there’s no conflict of interest.
Welcome to our armed and dangerous future.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that the Planning Commission had approved Jones’ project. A correction has been made to reflect that The Planning Commission has recommended that the Board of Supervisors do so, and the Board will make the final decision.
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