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4 sustained gunshot reports involve some kind of target shooting. Our role is to check to see that everything is OK. Ninety nine percent of the time our presence is received well, he said. We’ll ask if the homeowner minds us taking a look at the shooting range, so we can deem whether the situation involves safe gunfire or not. We do not have a scientific formula for figuring that out. The deputy on the scene will use his or her common sense to make that determination. If itis determined that the situation is safe,then we’ll clear the call and inform the complainant what we found,if that person wants to know. In probably 1% of the time the person at the scene does not want us there. If we do not see anything that constitutes a violation of the General Statutes then we don’t really have a reason to be there. We don’t make a big deal of it. We try to see what we can, and leave. There are three broad categories of data that we have. There’s criminal activity, which is not included in recreational shooting. Examples of that are a home invasion or ashooting where someone has been struck. Second, we have hunting, which is governed by the NC Wildlife Commission and the General Statutes. We don’t really check into that, and nine times out of ten we can’tfind them anyway. Hunting does not involve sustained gunfire, for the most part, unless it’s deer or dove season, and then the situation is apparentto us. Target shooting is where we have most of our encounters with people who are engaged in sustained shooting. We have had a steady reduction in the number of calls involving target shooting. In 2012, we had 60 callsthat we responded to and discovered safe target shooting.In 2013, we had 47. In 2014 we had 44. And in 2015 we had 28. Each year, we also found a few people who were shooting unsafely (for example, shooting in the wrong direction or –and this is not using good common sense –sighting a high powered rifle in a mobile home park). In 2012 we found 8 unsafe shooting situations, in 2013 we found 6, in 2014 we found 2, and in 2015 we found 1. If an unsafe shooting situation leads to damage to property or someone being injured then we use the General Statues to address it on the scene. Deputy Sykes said that his data is only for 9-1-1 calls. The low number of unsafe target shooting 9-1-1 calls might be attributed to people directly calling the Planning Department or the Commissioner’s office instead of calling 9-1-1, he said. It could be one individual calling us repeatedly. Later in the meeting, Deputy Sykes added that some neighbors are talking directly to their neighbors instead of calling 9-1-1.