Jackson County commissioners will decide next month whether to enact an ordinance governing shooting ranges.

The commissioners reluctantly passed a 90-day moratorium on shooting ranges in May at the behest of county residents opposed to a planned shooting range in Tilley Creek, a semi-rural valley in southern Jackson County near Western Carolina University. The moratorium bought the county time to examine what became an explosive issue, pitting those who dislike regulation in any form against those who claim lack of land-use regulations allowed inconsiderate neighbors to ruin their quality of life. Commissioners asked the county planning board to write an ordinance regulating shooting ranges, but the majority seemed lukewarm to the idea. They said they would consider the ordinance following the moratorium, but not necessarily enact it.

A divided planning board has passed the ordinance 4-2. Planning board member Ira Jones was adamantly against the ordinance. He was afraid the planning board would end up taking heat for the ordinance, even though it wasn’t their idea and they were just doing what the commissioners asked. Jones is already envisioning the public hearing that will be held on the ordinance sometime next month.

“Somebody will say ‘this is presented to you by the planning board,’ and oh boy, we’ll get it then. These old boys aren’t going to know that I didn’t vote for it and they’re going to look at it and say ‘why, I didn’t know you knew words that big,’” Jones said. “I can’t be no part of it. I can look at my buddies on the street and say I didn’t vote for it.”

Planning board member Bob Ginn also voted against it.

The ordinance has few restrictions. It requires the shooting stations on a shooting range to be 300 feet from the property line and 1,000 feet from an occupied dwelling. It bans shooting on Sunday and limits shooting from 30 minutes after sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset.

Vera Guise, an opponent of the shooting range and professor at WCU, said 1,000 feet would do nothing to protect residents from noise. Noise from the shooting range in Tilley Creek would have traveled all the way up the valley and surrounding coves to the ridgeline.

“For it to really protect mountain people, whether it’s newcomers or old-timers, insiders or outsider, it would have to address decibel level that travels up terrain. Noise is like heat, it rises,” Guise said.

Guise, a native of Jackson County, has been frustrated with the natives-against-newcomers label that has dominated the controversy.

Most residents of Tilley Creek were opposed to a shooting range in their community, and most of them are natives, said Guise. They signed the petitions and came to the meetings.

“I don’t have a thing in the world against shooting ranges unless they are right here in the middle of a community,” said Steve Webb, a native of Jackson County who lived near the proposed shooting range. “It was just more or less the noise factor.”

Sam Hopkins, also a native of Jackson County who opposed the shooting range, was low-key when asked how he felt about no longer having the shooting range as a neighbor. “I think it is alright.”

When asked why he opposed it, he said “for the noise.”

That’s not exactly fodder for a long speech at a commissioners meeting, which is why the newcomers ended up dominating the stage when it came to presenting arguments before the rest of the community, Guise said.

In addition to noise, safety also concerned many residents who lived adjacent to the proposed shooting range. The range was billed as a skeet shooting range, where shooters fire at a moving target, usually a clay disc hurled through the air.

Why bother?

Some on the planning board said a shooting range ordinance is a moot point now that the gun club lost the property and has said it is no longer interested in building a shooting range here.

“When we have to cross them, I figure we’ll cross them,” Jones said. “We’re all probably going to have an operation at some point in our life, but it doesn’t mean we go out and reserve the room now.”

Richard Wilson, another planning board member, disagreed.

“You wait until something goes bad and you don’t have anything in place and you’ve lost the boat. You prevent a situation like that from occurring,” Wilson said.

Members of the Smoke Rise Gun Club have told county officials they are no longer interested in putting a shooting range in Jackson County. Smoke Rise members are refusing to speak to the media, however, citing too much negative publicity, and would not confirm whether they have shelved plans for a shooting range.

“I can’t say officially one way or the other,” said Lyndon McKee.

“I can’t comment and I’m sure that no one else is either,” said Randy Deitz.

Residents opposed to the shooting range said now is not the time to give up on an ordinance and vowed to continue seeking approval of an ordinance from county commissioners.