Legal threat to paintball in Wisconsin

[cphilip]

Yes it could be changed. It is not even a bill as we first thought and Bill found out later. I should have noticed the reference to NR 45.04(3)(q). I completely missed that at first. That is the State Register. 45 being the title, .04 the reference section and (3)(q) the exact section and paragraph. Same process to change it. They do have to take public comment and probably did so for 6 months without anyone discovering it. There is advertisement but its in the State Register where its published. Points out the need for a Lobbyist to read the state and Federal registers every week. I use a service to do that for EPA regs. Not one for Paintball I guess. But you can hire one that looks for other stuff to do it.

[Webmaster]

UGH - most not of had enough caffine this morning... Didnt see this post - so I will "stick" it up too.

I will unstick both posts tomarrow because then it will be over...

But I urge you to be proactive with this.

While it isnt the "end" of our sport - when restrictions are placed, it makes it easier for more restrictions to come. They can use this law as a bases to ban paintball period in wisconsin later. Or other states could use it as a case study for thier own anti paintball laws.

They start to chip away your rights, and then you have nothing left.

[billmi]

Originally posted by shartley
But... would I be correct in assuming that if it can be modified, it can be modified AGAIN? I look through the NH RSA's all the time and a good portion of them are in constant "flux" due to modifications. It is not the end of the world. Just needs more modifications.

Yes, that is correct. The big difference is that modifying it NOW can be done in a matter of hours. Modifying it later, it may close down commercial fields (again, it's not yet known if there are any existing fields that are on DNR administered land) and it is a 6 month + process.

See you on the field,
-Bill Mills

[shartley]

So, this process takes 6 months or more? (playing the Devil's Advocate now..) And the PPMA puts out a Legal Alert in the 11th hour? In the business world they have a saying... "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Closer attention to these types of things would be well advised.. or I would think so.

Bill, you only put out what you got, and WHEN you got it.. and that is admirable. But this seems more like cleanup and scrambling, then a proactive dedication to the Paintball Industry on the part of the PPMA. Do you know if they have any proactive measures in place for other things like this? Honestly, I can not see what a handful of e-mails and phone calls will do at this point to change today's events.

I see some major cleanup having to be done, and it only starts today. But it should have started 6 months ago. And I feel that no matter how anyone feels about this issue NOW, it will do little good to change events happening today. I may very well be wrong, but those are my gut instincts.

Am I saying that people should NOT call or send in e-mail? Heck no! They SHOULD! But not because it will actually change things today, but because it will help change them starting tomorrow.

But.. on another note, do we know if this has any sort of Grandfather Claus in it? I know many of the Gun Laws provide for such things.

And one more thing... do you know if anyone that would be affected by this new change were notified of the planned changes? I know that when we go through zoning changes, or business laws, I get notification of the planned changes well before they take place. I have never been blindsided by this process. So this 11th hour thing confuses me just a bit in that aspect. I know that if I owned an affected field, and was notified in advance, I would have shouted from the rooftops LONG ago.

Thanks in advance.

[billmi]

Originally posted by shartley
So, this process takes 6 months or more? (playing the Devil's Advocate now..) And the PPMA puts out a Legal Alert in the 11th hour? In the business world they have a saying... "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." Closer attention to these types of things would be well advised.. or I would think so.

There was no PPMA 6 months ago.

Previous attempts to form industry associations fell flat, and the APIC lobbying group founded in the 1980s fell apart because the paintball industry did not financially support it.

PPMA still only consists of a handful of paintball companies who are choosing to do something, while the rest sit idle.

I know they pay for services which monitor things like this - and what I've been told from PPMA was that announcements of this went only into a couple of very obscure publications, and thus hadn't been picked up by the monitoring services. I suspect a slim budget and relying on volunteer efforts are a factor in keeping track of legal threats to paintball in the federal government, 50 state governments, untold numbers of county governments, and Canadian agencies as well.

Obviously more effective work could have been done had earlier, but I don't see how that affects the importance of the issue now. It seems to me it is more important to deal with something that has a short deadline than a long one.

Bill, you only put out what you got, and WHEN you got it.. and that is admirable. But this seems more like cleanup and scrambling, then a proactive dedication to the Paintball Industry on the part of the PPMA. Do you know if they have any proactive measures in place for other things like this? Honestly, I can not see what a handful of e-mails and phone calls will do at this point to change today's events.

Yes, at the present the PPMA is lobbying I believe a total of 5 other governmental agencies regarding state or local laws that would either ban, or heavily restrict paintball. Most of this is kept quiet to avoid rallying anti-paintball lobbyists to the same issue. It's made public when lobbying efforts up to that point have failed (like with the issue in Canada earlier in the year) - this is the methodology in use with the NRA and other similar interest groups.

But.. on another note, do we know if this has any sort of Grandfather Claus in it? I know many of the Gun Laws provide for such things.

The drafts I have seen do not.

And one more thing... do you know if anyone that would be affected by this new change were notified of the planned changes? I know that when we go through zoning changes, or business laws, I get notification of the planned changes well before they take place. I have never been blindsided by this process. So this 11th hour thing confuses me just a bit in that aspect. I know that if I owned an affected field, and was notified in advance, I would have shouted from the rooftops LONG ago.

Thanks in advance.

That's part of the problem. It appears that very little notification was made, and a number of the other changes have affect on other uses besides paintball (limiting access by divers to specific locations, etc.)




And to add further info that I have just received:
"this reg does get looked at by a committee in
both of the houses, though it still is on a regulatory tract that does not follow the same track as a bill exactly"

However the likelyhood of keeping it from passing is super slim, because it is a large packet of changes, not just one thing dealing with paintball. This is as opposed to changing the wording to something like only allowing paintball by use permit or something like that while it is still in committee.

It has been worked on first by the senate committee, and then the house committee (this is the last shot for changes by the house committee). The house committee did at least change the wording - one of drafts I have seen, I believe from the senate committee had a ban on paintball equipment possession, not just use.

I will continue to update info as I receive it.

See you on the field,
-Bill Mills


Edited to fix errors in UBB code.

[shartley]

Thanks Bill. I look forward to seeing how this progresses. It looks like a good example to learn from for future things.

[BTAutoMag]

NO NO no i refuse to belive that i cant play no more

[raehl]

Wow....

I wish I had caught this thread earlier. ANYWAY:

First: This isn't a law. It's not even a proposed law. The press release is *TREMENDOUSLY* inaccurate.

I spent a half hour on the phone this morning with the committee chairman's office both as a WI resident and the President of the NCPA, as I was concerned what impact this rule would have on WI college clubs ability to conduct their activities.

The more I learn about this, the more disappointed I am in the way this has been handled.

First, some history. Earlier this year one of the WI DNR technical advisory committees decided that it would be a good idea to prevent a potential surge in outlaw paintball play on DNR lands by making it clear with a rule that the POSSESSION or USE of paintball equipment on DNR lands was not acceptable. This went through at least one and maybe up to FIVE public hearings at the department level.

The DNR submitted their proposed new statutes to the Natural Resources Cemmittee in November. The NRC has 30 days to review such statutes, and *MAY*, if it wants, hold a public hearing regarding them. They did, on December 5th. No one from the paintball community showed up, presumably because paintball hadn't been specifically mentioned as under consideration, but given the number of rules being proposed and its status as a one-liner, that's not surprising. Nevertheless, one of the committee members pointed out that banning the possession of paintball equipment on DNR land was rather extreme, and the committee reworded the statute to only prohibit the use of paintball equipment.

The PPMA apparently got wind of this last week and asked for another hearing. They were denied, as I was when I called and asked for one this morning, still thinking this was an actual law under consideration (as the PPMA has indicated and Bill has repeated - even though it is *NOT*.) While the PPMA suggests that it is up to the chairman to have another hearing, having one doesn't do any good if they can't get the quarum of votes necessary to conduct buisiness, and they didn't think they could pull that off given the proximity to the holidays.

I was also informed that this is HARDLY the last stand in this. The DNR can overturn its own rules, as can the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, a combined committee of members of the WI House and Senate.

Furthermore, paintball is banned on DNR land because it isn't authorized. Since it is the DNR who came up with this rule in the first place, the DNR obviously has no intention of issuing permits for paintball use of their land to begin with (it was, after all, the LEGISLATURE that revised the rule to make it less restrictive).

There are other points to note here. The vast majority of DNR land is secluded, undeveloped land. Hunting is only allowed on about half of it, and snow mobiling only on a tiny fraction of pre-approved trails.

It should also be noted that hunting and fishing are BOTH heavily regulated by the state, to the point where you need to register your equipment and pay annual licensing fees, just like you do for every other recreational activity using DNR land. On top of that, WI has some very detailed laws regarding how you may hunt and how you may snow mobile. So unless you want WI to come up with one of these:

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/cs/regs/Snomo.pdf

for paintball, like it does for every other activity on DNR land, and unless you want the WI government making you buy a permit, license and tags to affix to your marker, I would suggest you not beg them to make paintball permitted on DNR land.

The fact of the matter is that the use of state land is *NOT* free for anyone. Hunters support their access through registration and licensing fees and snowmobiliers are limitted to predesignated paths which are maintained by snow mobile clubs and paid for through snow mobile registration and licensing fees as well as snow mobile gasoline taxes. (Wouldn't you love to see a special tax levied on paintballs you buy at the store to cover paintball play on DNR land?)


PPMA and everyone else needs to realize that the ALTERNATIVE to the proposed DNR rule is a system that's even worse. If paintball were around 100 years ago, this would have been in place 80 years ago. As paintball gets more prominent, there *WILL* be government regulation. We have to decide what kind of regulation is acceptable. Hunting, fishing, snow mobiling, ATV riding, etc, are *ALL* *VERY* well regulated activities, and are *ALL* activities that are restricted both in WHERE you can do them and WHEN you can do them.

The only special treatment paintball is getting is *NOT* being subject to the kind of regulation that all those other sports are. This is a rule that says you're not allowed to play paintball where you already wern't allowed to play paintball.

Getting people to write letters and emails and make phone calls to legislators about a proposed paintball law that doesn't even exist just makes us all look silly. I know I certainly felt silly when I took the PPMA press release at face value, called the Committee Chair's office, and then was told what the REAL story is.

So, as I've said elsewhere, if anyone tells you that there is a law being proposed to ban paintball ANYWHERE in Wisconsin, they are mistaken. If they say that a new DNR rule treats paintball much more harshly than other activities, they are also mistaken - we're actually being given preferential treatment by *NOT* being subject to state regulation and *NOT* having to play licensing and registration fees and special taxes.


So, if you're going to call the WI government, be careful what you ask for. As a WI resident myself, I'd much rather have this rule than the alternative.

- Chris

[raehl]

One more point....

To say that this was only published in obscure newspapers is also misleading. This set of administrative statutes received the same treatment as any other similer set. What did happen is that PAINTBALL specifically, occupying only one line of the whole package, only got mentioned in one or two publications.

Again though, there is nothing wrong with this rule.

- Chris