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4 <br />the ordinance he could be prohibited from making noise with a firearm. It is subjective in (h) as <br />to what is noise, and how loud that noise is, and how unreasonable or disturbing it is. For some <br />people, that could be as much as one round being fired. Mr. Roberts reminded the Committee <br />that it had requested that paragraph (h) be included in a draft after reviewing a Chatham County <br />ordinance at its August 23 meeting. <br />In reply to a question from Mr. Hunnell, Chief Deputy Sykes said that he is not aware of any <br />complaints from places of worship regarding shooting nearby. I would be remiss if I did not <br />mention one thing that has not yet come up in discussion, he added, and that is the use of <br />exploding targets. Tannerite is legal and sold in gun stores, but a lot of our loud noise complaints <br />are about it. It would be up to the Committee to determine whether that is relevant to its business, <br />he said. In reply to a question from Mr. Hunnell, Commissioner McKee said that the Board of <br />County Commissioners did not have intent for the Committee specifically with regard to <br />exploding targets nor desire to limit what the Committee looks at within the broad parameters of <br />firearms safety and noise. <br />Mr. Roberts said that two or three years ago a school just across the county line in Durham had <br />called 911 with a complaint about loud, close shooting. The school was put on lock down. The <br />shooting was about 100 or 150 yards away on the Orange County side of the border. The Orange <br />County Sheriff’s Office made an arrest in that incident, for resisting an officer. Although the <br />charge was not gun related, the complaint was about close, loud shooting near the school. <br />Mr. Hunnell said that some states have regulations prohibiting shooting within so many yards of <br />a school. It would be acceptable to me to have a reasonable distance like that in our ordinance, <br />but it would be impractical for law enforcement to be measuring decibels in this context. Dr. <br />Arvik pointed out that under (h) decibel measurement “shall not be required” to enforce against <br />loud shooting. <br />Mr. Tesoro said that in the absence of a measurement, it is subjective to have, say, two neighbors <br />who do not want an existing shooting range, to get together to complain about the noise from the <br />shooting. The Sheriff in responding to that complaint would have the same subjective <br />determination. Our deputies are all great, but there are good days and bad days. Some things <br />might come across as being bad one day and be OK the next day. The determination of what is <br />disturbing noise is too subjective. <br />Mr. Roberts said that while he agrees that the determination would be subjective, paragraph (h) <br />would not apply to existing shooting ranges because the NC Sport Shooting Protection Act <br />exempts shooting ranges from enforcement of local nuisance ordinances that are passed or <br />amended after the shooting range has opened. In reply to a question from Mr. Tesoro, Mr. <br />Roberts said that the state law has not been challenged in court, so we don’t really know what a