Every county seat in the country has a law library. Call your county and ask them where their law library is and go down there.

This could be complicated, but the first place you should start is your city's zoning ordinance. Read up on what uses are allowed in the neighbor's location. Find out their zoning designation and find the section that lists what's okay there. Be careful, because oftentimes they'll be inclusive, in the sense that one designation will allow everything in a pervious one, plus some new things. Also look and see if there's a section dealing with "nonconforming uses," which might grandfather in old uses that predate the zoning ordinance. Also pay attention to the definitions section: don't assume a word means what you think it means.

I suspect that their use as a gun club is probably allowed under the zoning law, otherwise they'd probably have been put out of business a long time ago. If this is true, your recourse is under the legal theory of "nuisance." Depending on the law in your city, you may be able to simply call the cops on them and get them cited. This is more or less the same thing as filing a noise complaint, or having them cited for "disturbing the peace." Again, different places call it different things.

Otherwise you could hire a lawyer and sue them for damages (meaning money), or under some circumstances get an injunction against them running their club during certain hours or make them install noise barriers or do something else to mitigate the noise

(This is possibly the source of the "grandfathering" you mention, because under some circumstances, if you moved to the area after the gun club was already operating, you might not be able to claim they're a nuisance.)

Anyway, there's a lot more to all of this and if you really want to go against them legally you absolutely should talk to a lawyer. A layperson who just "reads up" will be waaay over his head.

The MUCH better way to proceed is to talk to your neighbors and see if they have similar concerns. If you've got some kind of organized group in the area, like a neighborhood association, you might find that others are frustrated with the same issue. You may be able to approach the gun club and get a "good neighbor" agreement in which they voluntarily agree to do things differently. I would avoid threatening them, but if you can make it clear you're anticipating contacting the police or filing suit, they may be willing to work out a compromise. Taking this route would be a lot better for everybody than trying to hammer them legally right out of the box.

Good luck!
Source(s):
My overpriced law degree.

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