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8 <br /> <br />x Commissioner McKee said that the Committee’s charge, beyond recommending whether an <br />ordinance is needed and what the ordinance should cover, is to recommend specifics to the <br />Board of Commissioners. We can have the County Attorney write the proposal, and then vet <br />it back through the Committee, but the more specifics this Committee provides to the staff <br />and the more discussion we have together, the better off we will be. The ordinance that was <br />proposed back in February was over the top and I would not support it. I have 160 acres and <br />with the restrictions in that rejected ordinance I only had a very narrow lane that I would <br />have been allowed to shoot on. Distance is a concern, he added. I tend to think that there is <br />no way you can shoot safely on a one-acre lot because of the proximity to neighboring <br />properties. <br />x Mr. Roberts said that the State’s limit on a local government’s authority to impose a fine is <br />$500,but it can apply to each incident and each incident can be a daily violation or twice in a <br />day. He said it hadbeen correctly stated that the ordinance would need to state clearly that <br />hunting would be exempt. Also, the NC Sports Shooting Range Act protects some shooting <br />rangesagainst nuisance violations: those already in existence at the time the ordinance is <br />adopted. I have not found any case law distinguishing a commercial shooting range from <br />someone hanging a target from a tree, but we can go to court to try it if we have to. Finally, <br />the County can enact an ordinance that reflects the kinds of restrictions that Committee <br />members have raised;some will be more difficult than others to enforce (for example, it <br />would behard to enforce noise and distance restrictions against someone who is shooting up <br />into the air). <br />The facilitator created a list of possible elements for inclusion in an ordinance based on what <br />Committee members said over the course of the meeting, as follows: <br />x Noise <br />x Distance <br />x Day/time restrictions <br />x Safety guidelines for law enforcement <br />x Zero tolerance for alcohol <br />x Large fine <br />x Parallel hunting laws <br />x Exempt hunting <br />x Exempt existing sports shooting ranges <br />x Contain the projectile <br />x Respect ethnic/religious backgroundsother than Christian. <br />The group agreed to discuss each element with the goal of providing specific recommendations <br />to the County Attorney about how to address each element within a firearms safety ordinance <br />and perhaps the County’s noise ordinance as well. In reply to a question from Mr. Webster, Mr. <br />Roberts said that the ordinance could be written so that each element would carry a fine. Each <br />element could be an independent violation with an independent fine associated with it; <br />theoretically you could have multiple violations at a time, he said. <br />When the group returned from a break, it continued its discussion of the possible ordinance <br />elements as follows: