Jackson County commissioners last week decided to table a shooting range ordinance that has been the subject of controversy for the past eight months.

The Smoke Rise Gun Club, which had alternately perused two sites in Jackson County for a shooting range, say they are going to Transylvania County instead. Four of the five commissioners were skeptical of a shooting range ordinance in the first place, but had agreed to consider one due to public pressure. Now they say it is no longer necessary.

“I think the threat that was present to that community by Smoke Rise is gone. That ordinance, though I was never in favor of it, was proposed primarily to deal with that potential threat,” said Commissioner Chairman Brian McMahan. “I’m not interested in writing a whole bunch of laws and putting them on the books for something we don’t even have.”

This is the second time the Smoke Rise Gun Club has told the county they no longer want to put a shooting range here. The first time they said that it turned out not to be true. They gave up on a site in the Caney Fork area last December, but a month later were pursuing a new site in Cullowhee, namely Tilley Creek.

Residents of the Cullowhee area lobbied the commissioners to pass a moratorium on shooting ranges while considering an ordinance. Commissioners reluctantly agreed in May.

At the time, representatives of Smoke Rise Gun Club told commissioners they would abandon their plans for a shooting range if the commissioners would abandon the idea of an ordinance.

Perry Eury, a shooting range opponent, found that odd. If they didn’t want to put a shooting range here any more, why did they care if an ordinance was passed, said Eury, an accountant in Sylva.

During the 90-day moratorium, Smoke Rise’s contract on the site in Cullowhee expired. Instead of waiting for the outcome of the ordinance, the neighbors took matters into their own hands and bought the 194-acre site, which is an old farmstead.

Eury said there are pros and cons to the ordinance being tabled.

“It is disappointing to me that other communities in the county are at a similar risk that we were at,” said Eury, who is one of the partners who bought the site.

Commissioner Joe Cowan, the lone commissioner who was opposed to the shooting range, said a future shooting range cannot slip in undetected. They would have to get a permit from the planning department, which would alert the commissioners.

“I’m OK on holding it, but if something similar comes up, I’d want to put it right back up there,” Cowan said. “I still favor an ordinance prohibiting shooting ranges in residential areas.”