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TOP: Harry Haun, wearing two hats, including that of a neighbor who couldn't attend, listens as Culpeper officials weigh a ban on the firing of guns on small tracts.
RIGHT: Gun owners and hunters wear blaze-orange hats to signal opposition to the Culpeper County shooting ordinance. |
Concerned hunters and other gun owners turned out in force yesterday to voice their disapproval of a suggested Culpeper County shooting ordinance.
Wearing blaze-orange caps and sporting National Rifle Association insignias, more than 125 outdoorsmen skipped work to form an overflow crowd at the Board of Supervisors' Rules Committee meeting. And the exclamation heard over and over again was a resounding, "This is not Fairfax County!"
The gun enthusiasts showed up to complain about a suggested ordinance--a slightly reworked version of a Fairfax County law--that would limit shooting to parcels of land 20 acres or larger and outlaw rifles larger than a .22-caliber rimfire.
After listening to the objections of the crowd, the committee agreed to table the issue for further study.
The ordinance was suggested at the committee's April 12 meeting and created a firestorm after a copy was obtained by a concerned shooting enthusiast three days later. The suggestion arose after residents of a county subdivision complained that their neighbor was target practicing in an unsafe manner.
"The initial problem was a neighbor issue," Culpeper County native Boyd Carpenter told the committee. "I went out and looked at the property and this man is shooting into a 30-foot-tall hill. It looked very safe to me."
Carpenter added that as far as can be determined, no one has ever been injured in a target-shooting accident in the county.
"I have a 200-yard [target] range on my property and I've never had a bullet go anywhere I didn't want it to," Carlin Ellyson said.
Bill Marsh, an NRA instructor, told the committee that even the town of Culpeper allows shooting with a permit. "I assumed responsibility and got a permit from the police to shoot a groundhog that's burrowing under my building."
Stevensburg farmer Wayne Lenn said the suggested ordinance would prohibit him from removing nuisance deer from his property under state guidelines.
"What right does a basically agriculturally illiterate bunch of people have to take that right away?" he asked Supervisors John Coates, Steve Walker and Steve Nixon, who comprise the committee.
Joel Partridge, the NRA's Virginia lobbyist, questioned whether the board needed to get involved at all. "Isn't this something neighbors could work out with neighbors?" he asked.
After being flooded with e-mails, calls and letters protesting the suggested ordinance, the Rules Committee began the meeting decidedly on the defensive.
Sheriff Lee Hart was asked to address the crowd, and his first words were, "I don't want to see Culpeper become Fairfax County." He added that, "You can't legislate common sense."
Capt. Jim Branch, Hart's second in command and an NRA member, then gave a short presentation on target-shooting safety based on the association's recommendations.
He reminded the audience that a .38-special bullet can travel more than one mile when fired with the proper trajectory and that a 30.06 rifle, commonly used as in deer hunting, can send a bullet more than three miles.
Committee members appeared sympathetic to the gun-owners' concerns, all citing that Culpeper County is still "country."
"We want to maintain that rural integrity," Nixon said.
Coates suggested that any future ordinance be restricted to designated subdivisions, but audience members questioned whether that plan would work.
"There are five of us [living] on 62 acres and we're considered a subdivision," said Rosemarie Matthews, a hunter.
Scott Jenkins, a town police investigator and veteran law-enforcement officer, told the board there are already state laws that can be applied when a firearm is fired recklessly.
In the end, it was suggested by almost everyone that the issue was simply another problem associated with Culpeper's rapid growth.
"We left Northern Virginia to use the rural atmosphere of Culpeper and we don't want Northern Virginia shoved down our throats," one woman in the audience said.
As the committee voted to table the issue for further study, Nixon agreed that "there is an influx of people from Northern Virginia who are not used to shooting."
Speaking to the new arrivals, he added, "This is Culpeper County, and you'll just have to adjust."
To reach DONNIE JOHNSTON: DJohn40330@aol.com
