Orange County NC Website
9 <br />are here is to give law enforcement and the County the ability to stop that sort of thing from <br />happening. If that makes it inconvenient for shooters then we have to accept it. I’m a shooter. <br />I’m an NRA instructor. I don’t want anybody hurt, and I don’t want anything done to restrict <br />anybody’s right to shoot. But I want to be sure there are negative consequences to them if they <br />shoot improperly. <br />Ms. Conti said there is nothing law enforcement can enforce with regard to a noise violation <br />when it comes to firearms. A citizen can call and law enforcement can come to the scene, but <br />once law enforcement arrives it does not have the teeth to enforce anything with respect to noise. <br />We have talked about danger and perceived danger, she said, but that’s a meaningless <br />distinction. When I talk about a person hearing unreasonable shooting I am not talking about <br />hearing someone shooting with their kids, skeet, ducks, dove, targets --none of that is <br />unreasonable. That is what living in the country is about. I’m taking about the kind of shooting <br />that really is frightening, where you don’t know how far away they are, or how many people <br />there are, or what direction they are shooting in, or what caliber they are shooting. Those are the <br />situations that cause reasonable people to be afraid. They perceive danger, and they don’t feel <br />safe. So to the extent that we are here to address safety, their not feeling safe from hearing <br />irresponsible shooting is within this Committee’s charge. <br />Things have changed, she said. Living in the country has changed. For all the generations who <br />have been shooting responsibly in the country all these years, still some people are abusing that <br />right.They are shooting assault rifles into exploding targets and they are treating guns like toys. <br />I’m not talking about the people who have bought houses out here and are surprised by the <br />shooting, like those living next to an airport and are surprised by the planes. I have been living in <br />the country a long time. It’s different now. We have a noise problem because of the people <br />abusing their right to shoot, and there is nothing in Orange County that gives law enforcement <br />the authority to do anything about that problem. <br />Maybe the solution is for the Board of Commissioners to take up the noise issue, she said. It <br />would be easy enough to lift the firearms exemption from the noise ordinance. But we’re here to <br />address firearms safety, and to the extent that people are not feeling safe when they hear firearms <br />noise I think it is hard to separate noise from this ordinance. We’re not here to talk about the <br />Second Amendment, she added. Nobody on this Committee is challenging anybody’s right to <br />bear arms. At the same time, none of us have the right to shoot anywhere, anytime, anyhow. <br />In reply to a question from Mr. Tesoro, Ms. Conti said that, although it is difficult, we can <br />differentiate between noise from unreasonable shooting and noise from reasonable shooting by <br />giving the investigating officer the authority to make that distinction. She noted that Mr. Tilley <br />had introduced the prima facie clause in section (g). If we require two complainants and then an