East Hampton, NY, homeowners are fighting to keep a popular local gun club from reopening, years after suing the venue over claims that stray bullets fired by members had struck local homes.
It seems some homeowners in East Hampton’s Wainscott community are not happy about having their home on the range—the shooting range, that is.
Several residents of the Merchants Path neighborhood launched a lawsuit against the Maidstone Gun Club in 2022 after reporting that stray bullets struck their homes.
The gun club, which has been in the area for 42 years, maintains that the bullets did not come from their facility but rather from people shooting illegally in the woods surrounding the property.
Nonetheless, that litigious filing led to a court-ordered temporary restraining order in November 2022, forcing the gun club to cease all operations since that time.
However, the issue has been thrust back into the forefront of local debate in recent weeks as the Maidstone Gun Club may be poised to finally reopen soon.
The club’s 30-year lease—for which it paid $100/year for the use of 97 acres of parkland near the East Hampton airport—expired over a year and a half ago. Owing to the pending lawsuit and renegotiations, a new lease has yet to be signed.
But with hopes of reopening the club—which is deemed as an “everyman’s” shooting range that serves the community as well as local law enforcement—the town of East Hampton and Maidstone’s board are hammering out the details of a new agreement. However, some homeowners in the area are still up in arms and trying to block the renewal.
The question now is can a long-standing gun club and an elite neighborhood learn to coexist in harmony?
Members: It’s not just a gun club; it’s a legacy
In an area that today is most often associated with society’s elite, the Maidstone Gun Club has always prided itself on the fact it’s not exclusive or high end. With annual dues running only $150/year, the gun club has roots from the 1930s in Amagansett, NY, incorporated as a nonprofit in the 1950s, and landed at its current location in the 1980s.
At the time of the gun club’s move to the Wainscott area near the East Hampton airport, the idea was that the club would be “out of the way” because no one else was around.
According to reporting in the East Hampton Star, the club was enticed to relocate to the area with the town offering low rent as an “elegant solution to a problem: Move a ‘noisy’ gun club next to an airport and industrial park.”
However, in the last few decades, demographic shifts around the property where the gun club is located have led to new issues.
What was once “off the beaten path” is now surrounded by pricey East Hampton homes that frequently sell for millions of dollars. So while the club is still low profile, the surrounding neighborhood most definitely is not.
There are currently three listings for Wainscott properties with asking prices over $10 million on Realtor.com®—while the neighborhood’s median listing price is $3.7 million.
Meanwhile, East Hampton currently has 13 homes that are on the market for more than $20 million—and the latest median listing price is a sky-high $2.95 million as of April 2025.
Homeowners: Don’t go shooting up the neighborhood
In August 2022, construction workers at a home on Merchants Path said they heard bullets whizzing overhead as they worked. Surveillance cameras captured a bullet hitting the roof’s shingles as workers ran for cover.
As a result of that incident—and several other purported near misses since 2004—seven homeowners in the Merchants Path area filed a lawsuit against the Maidstone Gun Club, which is about a mile from their neighborhood.
Though the gun club maintains that the bullets did not come from their facility and were likely the result of individuals illegally shooting in the nearly 1,000 acres of parkland that surround the club, they immediately shut down voluntarily after the incident.
According to an article in AIR MAIL, however, an East Hampton Police Department report made public in 2023 concluded that there was a “great probability” the bullets had been deflected from the club’s outdoor rifle range, passing through safety barricades that were put in place to stop them.
Whether the bullets came from the club or elsewhere, however, with more than 90 homes now in the area along with business and schools—including a preschool less than a mile away—members of the community are arguing that the gun club has no place in the neighborhood.
There have been angry town halls and continued calls from concerned residents for the club to be shut down permanently.
Proposed solutions: looking for a path forward
Since the “incident,” the ensuing lawsuit, and the multiyear closure of Maidstone, members of the gun club have been working with the Town of East Hampton to find a path forward.
Though it might sound to some like efforts to oust the club could also have to do with the desire to take over “prime” Hamptons real estate (there was a proposal floated to turn the gun club’s property into affordable housing), the board members from Maidstone say that was never realistically an option.
“It’s sometimes hard to fathom just how significantly prices for developable land in this area have changed over the last 40 years, but the club property is zoned ‘park & conservation,’” says Ryan Horn, director of the Maidstone Gun Club. “Not only is a recreational, conservation, and public safety organization such as ours the highest and best use of the property, we have also exercised an exclusive right to renew our 30-year lease.”
The terms of the new lease have yet to be released, but Horn tells Realtor.com® the agreement between the town and the club will include a massive rent increase for the next 30 years.
It will likely also include provisions for even more safety enhancements, though Horn says that’s always been a priority.
“No member of the Club or the public has ever been injured in the 42 years we have been at the property,” says Horn. “Maidstone prioritizes safety and responsibility.”
And indeed, the club has always enforced strict rules including member training and no alcohol on the property. Plus, there is absolutely no “armor-piercing” ammunition allowed at the club, ever. Additionally, there are concrete safety tubes into which members must fire their weapons.
“Over and above what is required by our lease or the law, we have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on range improvements over the years,” says Horn. “We plan to undertake even more once the lease is signed and the litigation is concluded.”
Recent negotiations seem to indicate that there will also be no outdoor rifle shooting allowed once the range reopens, except for skeet and trap practice which is an Olympic sport. The club actually helped two students get college scholarships in the past by training there. Additionally, there are likely to be some exceptions for the police, who are allowed to use the range to practice for free as part of the lease’s provisions.
Though the forthcoming lease renewal between the Town of East Hampton and the Maidstone Gun Club has not yet been released, the hope is that it will provide protections for the surrounding community while still allowing the club to exist as a place for people to safely learn how to use firearms but also enjoy the social outlet of a long-standing community institution.
“Everyone who uses our facility, and the many more who want to join, are looking forward to reopening,” says Horn.