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13 <br />advocating for Lenoir. Section (g) is the one thing that provides some teeth and distinguishes our <br />ordinance fromLenoir. I’m reminded, she said, of a woman who stood in front of us at the end of <br />the previous meeting and asked if we have talked about issues that we have never even broached: <br />time of day, shooting at night, distance from structures, how much land must you own before <br />you can shoot, what is sustained shooting, what’s a safe berm, how far must a berm be from a <br />structure. <br />Mr. Tesoro and Mr. Tilley said that the Committee had indeed talked about all those issues. <br />Maybe, said Ms. Conti, maybe somebody just mentioned that issue. But we never discussed it, <br />and it certainly never got incorporated into the draft ordinance that is in front of us now. What is <br />in front of us now is practically useless to people who are not shooters in this community. I <br />believe this Committee was created because of the blow back that came from the regulations that <br />were proposed by some other governmental entity, to try to assuage the concerns in the gun <br />community that their freedom was being impinged upon. There are other people in the county <br />who have freedoms that are just as important as those. I don’t think we have begun to address the <br />freedoms of the non-shooting community. I’m embarrassed now because I realize I was <br />appointed to this Committee to represent the interests of those people, and I feel like I have failed <br />them miserably. So, for all the freedoms in this room, your freedoms as shooters have not been <br />infringed one bit by this ordinance. We have gone through this whole process just to protect the <br />rights of the shooter. Now, how about you address just for one second the rights –which are <br />equally as important –of the non-shooters? There is one paragraph in this ordinance that <br />addresses the rights of the non-shooters, and now we’re about to get rid of it. After having spun <br />our wheels for months now. We could have done this at the start by saying, “Let’s just do Lenoir <br />County.” <br />In reply to a question from the facilitator, Ms. Conti said she had no idea how to satisfy the needs <br />of non-shooters who are disturbed by the noise from unreasonable firearm activity while at the <br />same time satisfying the needs of responsible shooters who do not want infringements upon their <br />freedomto shoot. If we lose (g) from the ordinance, the facilitator said, it is because we as a <br />Committee could not figure out how to mutually satisfy those two sets of interests. It is OK if we <br />are at that point, he said, to recognize it and let it fall to the Board of County Commissioners to <br />try to figure it out.The Committee would have more control over the solution if it had a good <br />recommendation, but we need a substantive idea. If Dr. Arvik’s proposal to eliminate <br />“unreasonably loud” is insufficient then let’s keep hacking at it, he said, unless you all have <br />decided that we are done. I don’t want you to be done out of frustration. I want you to be done <br />from an intelligent decision that we cannot come up with a solutionat this time with this group <br />of seven people who are here tonight. <br />Dr. Arvik said that we have failed if neighbors are disturbed by the location and time of <br />somebody’s shooting. We haven’t given Chief Deputy Sykes any tools for dealing with that. If