Asked to put limits on shooting guns, Lancaster County may instead add more options
As a wide range of possible shooting regulations in Lancaster County narrows, it doesn’t appear property owners will be further limited as to when and where they can fire their guns. There may even be new options.
Late last year, some residents came to the county Public Safety Committee with shooting concerns. There was an incident where one property owner was nearly struck by a stray bullet from a neighbor shooting toward a berm.
County safety officials and law enforcement met to discussion options. At one point there was a proposal to amend county codes to further hold shooters criminally liable if a round leaves their properties, and to ban non-hunting shooting from sundown to sunup.
But the County Council didn’t take well to the proposal.
“The criminal code part has just gone quiet,” County Administrator Steve Willis said Friday. “If council wants us to revisit it, we’ll revisit it.”
The county instead will continue to rely on state rules that carry criminal penalties. State rules address deliberate but not careless shootings.
“At this point we still pretty much follow the state rules,” Willis said.
In researching county rules, another issue arose. A unified development ordinance passed almost a half dozen years ago didn’t address one pressing shooting question, and had inadvertently ruled out another.
“What triggered it was a business that wanted to do sporting clays,” Willis said.
Currently, the county doesn’t have sporting clay shooting facilities as an option in its various zoning or land use districts. It isn’t addressed in the development ordinance, nor is something that was part of prior land use planning — turkey shoots.
“We’ve had turkey shoots forever and a day,” Willis said. “It never really has caused a problem.”
Turkey shoots — marksmanship contests with prizes that often are fresh or frozen turkeys — were unintentionally left out of the most recent land-use revision.
When the planning commission meets Tuesday, Feb. 16, one item on the agenda is a rule change to list zoning districts and requirements for allowing shooting ranges and turkey shoots.
Shooting ranges would be allowed in rural residential, rural neighborhood and open space preservation districts. They would require a special exception permit. Turkey shoots would be allowed as a temporary use in agricultural residential, rural residential, rural neighborhood and open space preservation districts.
Turkey shoot rules would largely mirror what they were prior to the 2016 land-use revision.
This story was originally published February 15, 2021 at 6:00 AM.
