from The Blaze:
A Colorado gun club avoided eviction this week by agreeing to drop a new requirement that its 700 members join the National Rifle Association.
Just days after being threatened by city officials, John Malarsie, president of the Durango Gun Club in Durango, Colo., announced in a letter the group’s decision to “voluntarily suspend this membership requirement.”
City Manager Ron LeBlanc told the Durango Herald: “We told them either to stop or get evicted – I think that’s pretty clear.”
The gun club is private, but it has for the last 51 years leased — at no charge — its indoor shooting range from the city. Its other property, an outdoors shooting range, is leased from La Plata County at a cost of $1 per year.
So when it was reported that the group intended to become “100 percent NRA,” some residents recoiled, claiming that the city would be guilty of “subsidizing political speech,” the Herald reported.
The club was then told on March 13 that it needed to drop the NRA membership requirement or face eviction.
