To the editor:
Like a bird watching a snake, I’m watching with fascination the court case involving the Peterborough gun club in which the club claims ownership of land that was bought long ago by honorable Peterborough citizens who no doubt have been paying the property taxes.
Evidently, there’s some kind of law more or less saying that if you use a piece of someone else’s land for 20 years with no complaints from the owners, you own it. This seems like a law enacted by Stalin, and if it’s valid, the gun club could also claim ownership of the houses on the street beyond the land in question. Why? Because bullets fired from the gun club have been flying around these houses for years and the home-owners neglect to rush outside and see where the bullets come from.
If the gun club wins, a way to wealth seems clear – we sneak through deep woods into other people’s property and now and then do something there that doesn’t show unless we want it to. In time we claim the land as ours and thus become the owners although we pay nothing and the people who believed they owned it preserved it and paid the taxes. Sounds good??
Liz Thomas
Peterborough