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of criminal activity connected with the use or possession of a firearm,1 the Sheriff’s Office is unable <br />to require an individual to cease discharging a firearm. If the County were to decide to regulate the <br />discharge of firearms, clear standards are necessary to allow for enforcement. Noise and rate of fire <br />regulations are extremely difficult and almost impossible to enforce given the brief duration of the <br />sound. <br />Instead, the Sheriff’s Office seeks to gain the cooperation of the individual whose discharge <br />of a firearm is the subject of the complaint. Consistent with the Sheriff’s Office’s philosophy of <br />community policing, deputies encourage County residents to be considerate of their neighbors when <br />discharging firearms in addition to talking with one another about such matters. With regard to <br />shooting ranges, the North Carolina General Assembly amended The Shooting Range Protection <br />Act of 1997 to include any recreational shooting range, regardless of when it began operating. <br />Effective July 1, 2015, a person who owns or operates a recreational shooting range in North <br />Carolina is not able to be prosecuted criminally or sued civilly in any lawsuit related to noise or noise <br />pollution resulting from the use of the shooting range, so long as the range is being operated in <br />compliance with noise control laws in effect at the time the range began operating. See An Act to <br />Amend Various Firearm Laws, 2015 N.C. Sess. Laws 2015-195 (N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-409.46). <br /> <br />1 Examples of such activity may include bullets striking a home or personal property, possession of a firearm by a <br />felon, a victim’s statement alleging the commission of a crime involving the discharge of a firearm, or discharge of <br />a firearm on educational property. <br /> 113