A gun club nestled in heavy woods on the outskirts of Pittsburgh was thrust into the national spotlight after one of its members tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump on Saturday.
Clairton Sportsmen’s Club denounced the “senseless act of violence” in a statement Sunday, acknowledging that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was a member.
The extent of Crooks’ participation at the club is so far unknown. In interviews this week, its president, an ex-employee and a former member defended its reputation as a safe environment with a family-friendly culture that emphasizes the importance of firearms safety.
Bill Sellitto, the club’s president, said in a phone call Tuesday that violence is “not in our culture.”
“What happened Saturday was a horrifically terrible thing. We’re just sick about it,” he said. “I mean, that’s not us. I don’t know what else to say about that. It’s impacting the club. There’s a bunch of us that have slept about a few hours in the last three days.”
Sitting on 180 acres at the top of a roughly half-mile road about a 30-minute drive from the Crooks family home, Clairton Sportsmen’s Club is one of the larger gun clubs in the area, said Charles Rondinelli, a freelance writer who wrote several columns for gun enthusiasts for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
“It’s a very nice club,” he said. “But all of the clubs around here, as far as I know, are very nice. They promote healthy shooting.”
The club has about 2,200 members, Sellitto said. Families with children, women and young adults make up a large proportion of its paying customers, he said, declining to provide specific numbers.
Five law enforcement agencies train at the facility, he said, and a lot of its members are members of the club.
People join for a variety of reasons: practicing before deer hunting season, clay-target practice shooting on one of the 13 lighted skeet and trap fields, or participating in one of its leagues. A “tremendous” archery program attracts a lot of children, Sellitto said, some of whom shoot competitively in the area.
The club also offers a 200-yard rifle range, and on its website it describes its “club rifle discipline” as a “very active and varied facet of our club.” Parents and children have the opportunity to shoot together on the Small Bore Rifle Team.
Daneen Barone Shelton, 64, of West Mifflin, recalled how safe the club was when she worked there as a teenager.
“It was a family-friendly place. My whole family went up there and shot,” she said.
Her nephew, Michael Barone, 38, of Clairton, left the club because his job in law enforcement required him to undergo training that the club did not allow.
“They’re a safe club,” he said, adding that “they’re very strict on all the rules.”
Barone said he knew that whatever Crooks was involved in “had no affiliation with the club.”
“The club’s a good club,” he said.
Crooks was shot and killed by at least one Secret Service member moments after he opened fire at Trump’s rally in Butler. Trump, who said he was hit in the ear, was treated at a local hospital and released.
A motive in the shooting, which killed a spectator and injured two others, is still unclear. More than a dozen guns were found in a search of the Crooks family home, according to four senior officials.
Gun sales have been high across Pennsylvania. Last year, the state ranked fourth for the most guns sold in the country — 841,523 — behind California, Florida and Texas, according to SafeHome.org, which said it gathered data from the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System. Total estimated sales from January to April in Pennsylvania were nearly 300,000, according to the site.
The state says there were over a million license-to-carry permits and just over 10,000 sportsman permits in Pennsylvania as of July 1. In the most recent census, in 2020, the state had a population of just over 13 million.
Rondinelli said western Pennsylvania “has always been a shooting area.”
“There used to be a great deal of organized shooting here, but that was maybe 30, 40, 50 years ago. But the shooting culture is still alive,” he said in a phone call Wednesday. “There’s still quite a few organized shoots in different areas here. There are organized leagues.”
Sellitto said one of the club’s goals is to begin teaching firearms safety at a young age. The club hosts a free youth day event in the summer, where children can learn the rules about how to properly use firearms “and we show them the sport of shooting and archery,” he said.
“It’s a community thing. We try very hard to show kids responsible use of firearms,” he said.
Sellitto said that the club tries to be a “community organization” but that he fears its connection to Crooks will have unintentional consequences.
“I feel like we’re going to be the bad guys in all this,” he said. “And you know, it’s not us.”
