Facing a strong backlash to a draft firearms ordinance, the Standish Town Council voted 4-0 Tuesday night to scrap the proposal.

With an overflow crowd of approximately 125 people on hand – including many vocal gun owners – the proposed firearms regulations, known as the “Shooting Facility Ordinance,” had few champions.

“This absolutely is the wrong thing to do,” said Councilor Phil Pomerleau. “I’m not a hunter. I don’t own a gun. But I would never support this ordinance.”

“I don’t think any councilors are interested in this at all,” Pomerleau added. “For some reason, the cart got out before the horse this weekend, so everybody got all wound up over some flyers being passed out.”

The rejection of the ordinance came on the heels of a frenzied week of activity, in which town officials hastily put forward the ordinance without significant advance public notice, and Standish gun owners mobilized to beat back the proposal, distributing flyers at the town dump warning of a broad clamp-down on local gun rights.

The proposed ordinance was drafted in response to a petition drive organized by property owners in the Richville neighborhood, along Route 114, many of whom say they are outraged by the use of a large, nearby gravel pit known as Maietta’s pit as an informal shooting range for law enforcement and, in particular, recreational firearms users. Scarborough-based Maietta Enterprises has owned the 109-acre site since the early 1990s, and has significantly expanded gravel extraction at the site in the past two decades as part of its construction business. The Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office has used the pit as a SWAT-team training site for years, and the State Fire Marshal’s Office has exploded confiscated material on the site several times.

Deb Boxer, a resident of Cole Hill Road, submitted a petition Nov. 12, with 45 signatures, calling on the town to “disallow” the continued use of the Maietta pit as a “shooting range.”

Aside from banning people from shooting on property they don’t own outside of hunting season, the proposed ordinance would also have mandated that property owners acquire shooting-range licenses, approved by the Town Council after a public hearing. Shooting ranges would need to be sited a half-mile from any occupied existing dwellings, and noise levels would not be allowed to exceed 65 decibels, according to the draft. Each license would require $3 million in comprehensive general liability insurance. Violations of the ordinance would have resulted in a minimum $100 fine, as well.

At the meeting, Jeffrey Dolloff, of Dolloff Road, said that the proposed ordinance discriminated against renters and other residents who don’t own property.

“Right now, the way I read this, I don’t know if that’s how it’s intended, if you rent in the town of Standish you can’t fire a gun in Standish unless you are going to kill an animal,” Dolloff said. “Right off the bat, you’re discriminating against anybody who rents in the town of Standish. My grandson who got a .22 for Christmas, he can’t come to my 300-acre farm and shoot a .22 rifle to learn how to shoot.”

Dolloff, who said the proposed ordinance “blindsided” many Standish residents, argued that the regulation would limit the ability of renters to legally shoot intruders.

“The worst scenario to me is, the way this is written, any one of these guys and their wives, if they don’t own the property, and somebody came into the house, they don’t have a legal right to defend themselves in the town of Standish the way this is written,” Dolloff added.

Shawn Franck, a Kendra Lane homeowner, said that game preserve rules restrict him from shooting on his own property already. The proposed ordinance, Franck said, would also ban him from shooting at his friends’ Standish homes.

“I have friends that are landowners in the town of Standish – up to this point here I’ve been able to go over for a barbecue and we can shoot and have a good time,” Franck said. “This will prevent me from doing that. I now am driven out of town to sight-in a rifle, to teach my 3-year-old daughter how to shoot and become a sportsman.”

On Dec. 23, about 10 Richville property owners attended a Standish Ordinance Committee meeting, according to the committee chairman, Councilor Michael Blanck. They expressed anger regarding noise and safety issues related to shooting activities at the pit last summer, when the Saco-based firearms training company, Weaponcraft, held a number of daylong classes in which large quantities of ammunition were discharged in rapid succession, according to Blanck. After the town sent a cease-and-desist order to the Saco company, which did not have a permit, the classes came to a halt, according to Uel Gardner, Weaponcraft’s chief operating officer.

The property owners also brought pictures of a bullet lodged in the Chapman Way summer home of Maynard Jackson, which they said came from someone shooting at the pit. Deputy John Cross of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office investigated the incident on Oct. 16, according to sheriff’s department Capt. Donald Goulet. According to Goulet, Cross found a bullet and a bullet hole on an exterior wall of Jackson’s garage facing the pit. Goulet said Cross could not determine the precise origins of the bullet hole, although he reported it was plausible that it could have come from the pit.

According to Town Manager Gordon Billington, the town is not allowed to ban activities on one site, as that would be akin to spot zoning, an illegal practice. That’s why the town proposed the broad firearms ordinance, he said.

Yet at the meeting Tuesday night, none of the Richville residents spoke in favor of the firearms ordinance. According to Janet Lampron, a 30-year resident of the neighborhood who attended the meeting, about 10 Richville residents were in attendance.

Several gun-rights advocates did not hesitate to criticize the petitioners. Dick Bernier, a 32-year resident of Whites Bridge Road, received applause from the crowd when he reproached the council for proposing an ordinance in response to the petition.

“I’m a little dismayed as a taxpayer here to think that we would take the time and the energy over 40 malcontents that signed a petition and put together the time and energy for this,” Bernier said. “To cause these folks to come out on a cold Tuesday night, that’s more than an overreach.”

Shane Stephenson, a resident of Fort Hill Road, suggested that the Richville abutters should not complain, since it was their decision to live next to a pit.

“I live next to a pit,” Stephenson said. “I hear that stuff all the time. I know the problem, OK. I have my son here, he’s 9 months old. There are people discharging firearms all the time. It’s the nature of the beast of me living next to a pit. If people are dumb enough to buy a house next to a pit, that’s their problem.”

Lampron, who moved into her Richville Road home before Maietta purchased the site and substantially expanded gravel extraction there, said that the Richville residents who attended the meeting were too intimidated to speak up. Many of the neighbors, Lampron said, are elderly.

“I really believe that at that point everybody was afraid to stand up because they were afraid they would be targeted for trying to take somebody’s guns away, with people calling them and with violence,” Lampron said. “Did you see that crowd? They were saying ‘NRA’ – it was like they were being assaulted of their rights.”

To Lampron, who doesn’t understand why regulation cannot be applied exclusively to activities at the Maietta pit, the meeting was a “fiasco.”

“Our intent was to just deal with Weaponcraft, that gravel pit, and Mr. Maietta never following the rules,” she said. “That was our intent – not to take everyone’s gun rights away. Our intent was to just control what happens behind our own home with what was going on.”

Vincent Maietta, the owner of Maietta Enterprises, also attended the meeting. Apologizing for any “disruption” he had caused at the pit, and conceding that the neighbors had “legitimate complaints,” Maietta told town officials that he was not “looking for a fight.” Maietta also said that Weaponcraft may apply for a shooting range permit in the future.

“That company may or may not someday in the future apply for one of those permits to have a range,” he said. “They currently don’t. They’re currently not shooting there. We currently don’t have a problem. So let’s not try to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.”

Town officials said they may pursue other means of regulating firearms use at the Maietta pit, possibly through a future examination of the town’s existing gravel pit rules.

Toward the end of the meeting, Blanck, the sponsor of the ordinance, suggested scrapping it.

“Madam chair, this is dead in the water for me, also,” Blanck said. “I would like to make a motion that we indefinitely postpone this order, basically killing it.”

Following numerous chants of “Kill it!” from the assembled audience, the council voted unanimously to scrap the ordinance.

“It is dead,” said Councilor Lynn Olson, to great applause.