US News and World Report
U.S.News 8/13/01
A resort for gun owners
Welcome to Nevada
By Angie Cannon
Call it the new American dream. Or nightmare. A luxury gated community is planned for 550 dusty acres in the Nevada desert some 38 miles from Las Vegas. Front Sight, named for a gun barrel aiming sight, will resemble a golf community. But instead of being built around golf courses, homes will look out on 22 shooting ranges, a five-story SWAT tower, and a defensive-driving track.
The $50 million development will feature 177 homes and 350 condos on streets with snappy monikers like Second Amendment Drive (designed to appeal to fans of the constitutional right to bear arms). It will have a grocery, airstrip, lakeside restaurant, and its own private kindergarten-through-12th-grade school, where trained teachers can carry guns.
"Front Sight will be the safest community in America," boasts founder Ignatius Piazza, 41, a former California chiropractor, who provides firearms training at the site’s ranges. "A criminal would have to be crazy to come to a place where everyone is trained and armed. We won't have the problems people in other locations have." Piazza says he has already sold 45 memberships, including one-acre lots, for up to $350,000; construction is set to begin in two years.
The gun-toting community hasn't drawn much fire from locals. But outsiders are another story. Says Amy Stilwell of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence: "Studies show you are 22 times more likely to be killed with your own weapon than protected by it."