County, Shenandoah Farms move to head off a deadly shooting accident

Property Owners of Shenandoah Farms Board Chairman Ralph Rinaldi opens the case for added legal safeguards to prevent a looming accidental tragedy from recreational shooting in the sprawling neighborhood where average lot sizes have shrunk to about 3/4’s of an acre, he said. Royal Examiner Photos/Roger Bianchini. Video by Mark Williams, Royal Examiner.

On Tuesday evening, August 20, the Property Owners of Shenandoah Farms (POSF) Board of Directors came to the Warren County Board of Supervisors with a request that the Farms be added to the list of county subdivisions in which recreational shooting is not allowed.

At issue is the potential of an unintentional shooting accident in a once rural community with large home lots that has significantly grown in population in recent years with home lot sizes shrinking concurrently.

POSF Chairman Ralph Rinaldi introduced the request to the supervisors, asserting that “a large majority” of Farms residents who had made their opinion known to the board favored the request.

Beginning with Rinaldi and extending through six public hearing speakers all favoring the ban, the point was made that, “This is not about the Second Amendment, it is about safety.”

Included among those speakers favoring that the shooting ban be added to an existing hunting ban was one NRA (National Rifle Association) member and military vet, Larry Cox, and Dale Orlowske, both gun owners and recreational shooters; as well as two women who accentuated the personal safety concern, not only for themselves, but all Farms residents.

Dale Orlowske told the supervisors it was not ‘if’ something tragic would happen from unrestricted recreational shooting in Shenandoah Farms, but ‘when’ – the board agreed and unanimously voted to make recreational shooting illegal in the Farms.

“My concern is do I have to duck for cover,” Nancy Winn said of leaving her home to a fusillade of gunfire at an undetermined distance and direction.

The message was consistent and clear: the residential growth of the county’s largest subdivision over the past decade has made the residential neighborhood firing of guns, particularly “blind” and “reckless” shooting, a potentially fatal danger for residents, their families, children and pets.

Cox pointed to bullet strikes on his roof requiring tile replacement and “seven to 10 bullets” lying at the bottom of his swimming pool from guns being “fired into the air”.

One speaker referenced a near miss into an interior wall experienced by a former Farms homeowner. She described the miss as “a foot from her head”.

Winn quoted from an apparent social media response of one Farms resident angered by the thought of limitations being placed on his right to shoot his guns as he wished on his property, in his neighborhood. While not calling the messages typical of everyone who owns a gun and shoots recreationally in the Farms, the anger, profanity – “I’ll spell out the profanity” she told the supervisors before reading – and sometime threatening nature of the cited posts were concerning to her, she said.

“Most gun owners are safety conscious individuals, but it only takes one misstep for a tragedy to occur,” Rinaldi wrote the County Administrator in bringing the request forward.

“In your correspondence, you cited the possibility of someone discharging a firearm while intoxicated or otherwise irresponsible. Virginia Code 18.2-56.1 makes unlawful the reckless handling of firearms so as to endanger the life, limb or property of any person,” Virginia State Police Superintendent Gary T. Settle wrote Winn in response to her inquiry about relevant laws regarding firearms in Virginia.

Settle added that violation of that State Code was a Class 1 misdemeanor unless injury was caused. In those cases where serious injury results from the reckless use of guns the perpetrator faces a Class 6 felony charge and incarceration in addition to any financial liability.

Board discussion indicated the Warren County Sheriff’s Office would be responsible for enforcement if the ordinance request passed.

No one spoke against the requested ban and no letters opposing it were part of the agenda packet on the request.

See the discussion, the board’s reaction and unanimous vote adding the Farms to county subdivisions where recreational shooting, like hunting, is now banned in this Royal Examiner video: