Agenda - 12-05-2016 - 7-a - Recommendations of the Firearms Safety Committee

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8 Wake County, 900 feet in Mecklenburg County, 500 yards in Cabarrus County, and yes, 500 feet in Lenoir County from various buildings and areas. This Committee never even discussed distance. And, it never discussed a reasonable size for property from which a person can shoot. And, it never discussed, what constitutes a reasonable berm, or how far the berm must be from a residence. The Committee never discussed what caliber of firearm can be fired on any given property or what kind of target can be used. We never talked about what hours of the day are reasonable for shooting, or why it is acceptable to regulate hunting on Sundays, but not recreational shooting. You may wonder why these issues were never addressed in any meaningful manner, but that has everything to do with the composition of the committee: six out of eight Committee members are part of the gun community. There was a lot of talk among Committee members about a distinction between "real" safety issues, and "perceived" safety issues. This line of thinking holds that if people are firing their guns responsibly, and there have been no deaths in Orange County, there should be no need to regulate shooting,just because another person has a feeling of being unsafe. But, this distinction is meaningless to the person who is hearing persistent shooting, when they don't know how far away the shooter(s) are, from what direction they are firing, what caliber they are shooting from what range, and how many errant rounds are being shot. For that person, safety is an issue that just as real as standing next to a person with a gun, and the noise that alarmed those folks in the first place is tied to safety for them. There should be a component for regulating noise in some ordinance. Even a speaker from the gun community remarked that the "the mission of this Committee is not about firearms restriction; it is about noise and safety." None of this has anything to do with the Second Amendment. As another observer said, "the Second Amendment gives you the right to bear arms; it does not give you the right to shoot them anytime, anywhere, anyhow you want." The reality of life in Orange County, after living here nearly thirty years, is that times have changed, like it or not. The 100 acre tract where your family has been shooting for decades has now been surrounded by people who moved to the county, for better or worse, to have some distance and peace. If there is a need for an ordinance now, the gun community can thank their less respectful shooters who use high-powered rifles and exploding targets as if they were toys. The gun community was given an opportunity to provide input into a proposed firearm safety and noise ordinance. Their answer to the BOCC is an ordinance that is designed to assuage the fears of the gun community that their Second Amendment freedom is being infringed, and that ordinance is meaningless. As presently drafted,the proposed ordinance would make it legal to shoot an automatic rifle on a quarter of an acre of land, at an exploding target, at 2:00 in the morning, into any berm that the shooter deems appropriate, 50 feet from an occupied dwelling, and to fire those rounds as long as the ammunition holds out. The non-shooting community has freedoms,too, like safety and peace. While this ordinance does little to restrict the freedom of the shooters, it does nothing to protect the freedoms of the non-shooters. I was apparently appointed to the Committee to represent the interests of the non-shooting community, and they are going to wonder what I was doing with