News

County cracks down on firing shots recklessly

By Bill Moss, Published: January 7, 2025

Sheriff’s deputies now have a stronger law to back them up the next time homeowners report that irresponsible shooters are firing rounds into their neighborhood.

After receiving numerous complaints over the past several months from Hoopers Creek residents, Henderson County commissioners during their regular meeting on Monday night amended the county’s weapons ordinance to make property owners liable for shots fired from their land toward adjoining property or homes.

“The public has complained to us,” board Chair Bill Lapsley said in an interview Saturday. “We had some property owners up in the Fletcher area in the public comment time say there were some people that were shooting firearms on a vacant piece of property but some bullets were leaving the property. They showed a picture of bullet holes in the side of a couple of houses.”

Addressing the board on Nov. 20, James Martin spoke about “the irresponsible behavior of a neighbor recklessly discharging firearms in their neighborhood,” according to minutes of the meeting, and submitted a photo of bullet holes in a home.

On Dec. 2, Ryan Radford, a homeowner in the Addison Creek subdivision off Hoopers Creek Road, implored commissioners to crack down on shooters who were firing their guns from adjoining vacant land.

“I believe this issue was brought up to the commission at the last meeting, where we have an individual that’s choosing to shoot guns very, very close to our house, approximately from the two sides of the courtroom away from our front door, which is causing a problem for our entire neighborhood,” Radford said. “Kids are not playing outside like they should be. There’s a safety concern. A bullet actually struck our house, so we’re very concerned. This evening, we’re asking you guys to consider passing an ordinance similar to some other counties where there is a setback or a limitation to how close you can shoot a gun next to an occupied dwelling.

“We feel like it should be a common sense thing,” he added. “It’s a safety thing, and as you guys are considering it, we’d like to ask you to put yourself in our shoes, put yourself in our neighbor’s shoes, and ask yourself if you would like for your family, for your loved ones, to be so close to someone discharging a firearm recklessly.”

County law currently made it “unlawful to discharge a firearm in any manner which actually results in the projectile leaving the property on which it is being fired.” The addition commissioners adopted Monday night makes it unlawful for “the owner or lessee of real property to knowingly allow another to discharge a firearm from the real property they own or lease in any manner which actually results in the projectile leaving the real property on which it is being fired.”

When commissioners took up the ordinance change Monday night, Sheriff Lowell Griffin explained that deputies had investigated the shots fired from vacant land toward the Addison Creek homes.

“We investigated a round that had been fired and entered a dwelling, and we utilized everything at our disposal, with assistance from the ATF and federal probation,” he said. “We identified who we believe was a suspect, (conducted) a search of the suspect’s residence, the suspect’s girlfriend’s residence, looking for the firearm to match the round.”

Although deputies believed they knew where the shot had been fired from, “without being able to prove solid probable cause, much less prove beyond a reasonable doubt, we’ve not been able to file any criminal charges in this matter,” Griffin said.

The ordinance change, he said, would fix that.

“What we believe the intent of this ordinance will accomplish is to allow us to have some sort of enforcement action for somebody that owns property and allows folks to carelessly discharge firearms on that property,” he said. “We’re not going to have to prove necessarily who pulled the trigger, but we’re going to be able to hold, by ordinance, somebody responsible for allowing this type of activity to go on.”

With little discussion, commissioners voted unanimously to adopt the change.

“I would agree with the sheriff. This is a tool to keep the county safer without infringing on anybody’s Second Amendment rights,” Commissioner Michael Edney said.