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BOUNTIFUL — If you have leftover campaign signs from elections, a Bountiful shooting range will gladly take them off your hands.
Mitchell Dalby has been the range manager at Bountiful Lions Shooting Range for the past 15 years, and he said in 2011, the service club got the idea to collect the old campaign signs to use as shooting targets.
Dalby said the plastic in the signs is the same type of material used for the backing of the shooting targets at the range. The targets average $.75 apiece and the Lions Club's range has saved around $5,000 each year from the donated campaign signs, he said.
“The more that people donate, then we don’t have to buy them, and the more we don’t have to buy them, then we can donate more money and put more money back into the community projects that we support,” he said. “We give most of our money to things involving eyesight — Seeing Eye dogs for blind people; also we give a substantial amount of money to the Moran Eye Center; we provide prescription glasses to people in the community who can’t afford them.”
Since the project's beginning, Dalby said, the public has donated around 4,000 signs each year to the shooting range. The Bountiful Lions Shooting Range serves 25,000 shooters each year and Dalby said the donated campaign signs last three to four months.
Dalby said although they are using the campaign signs as targets, people aren’t shooting at the faces of the candidates; the signs are covered with a paper target.
“We did have a candidate who thought we were shooting their campaign signs in a malicious way,” Dalby said. “No, no, no, we don’t care who you are. We are just using your sign to put a paper target over. There is absolutely nothing malicious or politically motivated in any of this. We just want the plastic.”
Dalby said the signs are very useful to the shooting range and it can be an easier way for residents to get rid of them.
“It’s such a waste because they would just end up in a landfill or something like that if people throw them away. I mean, they will end up there anyway, but at least they’ll be shot into smaller pieces when we bring them into the landfill,” Dalby said.
People can donate any campaign signs by dropping them off at the Bountiful Lions Shooting Range at 1350 N. Skyline Drive. The range is open every day of the week from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Click here for directions.
