Guns rights group jumps into the Thunderbird Farms shooting debate

During public comments at the May 15 Warren County Board of Supervisors meeting Thunderbird Farms subdivision guns rights advocate Robert Utley implored the county’s elected officials not to approve a public hearing on a neighborhood initiative to ban recreational shooting.

Authorizing advertisement for a June 19 public hearing on the initiative brought forward at a May 1 work session was part of the meeting’s consent agenda. Consent agendas are presented for a number of items generally considered routine or housekeeping that do not require board discussion.

But if Utley believed that adding his subdivision to the list of county neighborhoods where shooting is legally prohibited does not merit public discussion, so the supervisors treated his request. A short time after public comments, on a motion by Dan Murray, seconded by Archie Fox, by a unanimous voice vote the board approved the six-item consent agenda “as presented” without discussion of Utley’s request.

And so the issues first heard by supervisors at that May 1 work session will be readdressed at a June 19 public hearing, after which the supervisors are likely to vote the proposal up, down, or perhaps delay a vote for further work-session discussion.

But could that June 19 public hearing evolve into something other than a neighborhood debate over the safety of firing guns recreationally in the Thunderbird Farms subdivision – a subdivision where such activities are already prohibited by protective covenants signed upon purchase of property there?

Based on posts on the website of a state gun rights advocacy group, the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL), some supporters of that shooting ban fear the answer might be yes. A link to the VCDL website indicated the group urging its statewide membership to directly contact the Warren County government in opposition to the Thunderbird Farms legal shooting ban.

“Today we are asking for your help. If you have a moment, please email the Warren County Board of Supervisors Chairman, Tony Carter, and Fork District Supervisor Archie Fox to state that you oppose this action and you would like them to reject Thunderbird Farms Property Owners Association Board of Directors request.

“Below is the contact info for all of the Board of Supervisors, Count (sic) Attorney and the County Administrator. Call or email them in opposition to placing Thunderbird Farms under County Code 177-3 …” – this message was followed by the name, phone number, a physical and e-mail address for all five members of the Warren County Board of Supervisors, as well as County Administrator Doug Stanley and County Attorney Dan Whitten.

Contacted, Board Chairman Tony Carter estimated receiving 100 to 125 e-mails that appeared to originate from the VCDL campaign. Most, if not all were copied to the entire board, Carter said.

Royal Examiner also contacted Utley, whose name was mentioned as the VCDL member who brought the matter to the group’s attention. Utley verified that was the case.

Point-Counterpoint
Asked if he viewed the matter as a Second Amendment issue, he replied, “It is absolutely about that – there is no basis for their (the county board’s) involvement.”

Utley elaborated that adding Thunderbird Farms to the list of neighborhoods where recreational shooting is prohibited by County Code 177-3 as a public safety matter would criminalize what he sees as a subdivision covenant issue that there are processes in place to deal with. He said formal complaints can be filed with the POA board that can lead to fines, even civil complaints being filed.

Shooting of any kind other than self defense is already banned by the subdivision’s “Protective Covenants” established in the 1970’s and revised in March 1999. “No use of firearms, except for self-defense shall be permitted,” covenant 13 states.

“There is a mechanism in place but they (the proponents of legal shooting ban) want the Warren County Sheriff’s Office to do the enforcing for them – and make it a criminal offense that carries up to one year in jail and up to a $2,500 fine or both.” Responding to a question, Utley said he does not shoot on his property and estimated only 5% of the gunfire heard in the neighborhood is originating there.

During the May 1 work session discussion, shooting-ban proponent Skip Sims noted that enforcement of such covenants by the volunteer Thunderbird Farms Property Owners Association (TF-POA) board can be difficult at best, dangerous at worst. Sims said he was reluctant to call POA board members to intervene when he hears shooting he believes is occurring in violation of the subdivision covenants because it isn’t necessarily safe to walk up on armed people.

Sims pointed to a past confrontation over shooting in the neighborhood as evolving into what he called “a white knuckle situation”. He observed that the lack of an official record of covenant violations went down to the “dynamics of the POA board function” and “the ability and willingness” of volunteer officials to enforce the covenants on such a volatile and potentially dangerous issue.

That dynamic is all the more reason to bolster the legal grounds for introducing professional law enforcement authority into the equation, Sims told the supervisors on May 1.

However, Utley counters that there are already legal parameters and punishments in place for how recreational shooting must occur in non-County Code 177-3 neighborhoods. He quoted those parameters as including that target firing be “done in a safe manner; not in the direction of homes or across the shooter’s property; and into constructed berms that can absorb the gunfire.”

At the May 1 work session Utley pointed to the five-acre minimum lot size of Thunderbird Farms. He asserted the Ag-zoned neighborhood does not meet the criteria to be placed under County Code 177-3. That code states the legal shooting prohibition should be applied to “designated subdivisions or other areas of the County which are, in the opinion of the Board of Supervisors, so heavily populated as to make such conduct dangerous to the inhabitants thereof.”

However, at the work session shooting-ban proponent Bob Richardson pointed to the shape of many T-bird Farms lots, like his own, as long and thin leading to a closer proximity of homes than might be expected among 5-acre or larger lots. Richardson told the supervisors that while his lot is 1,200-feet long, it is only 96-feet wide. The veteran and retired law enforcement officer pointed out that with modern weapons, including semi-automatic rifles which he indicated he has heard being fired in the vicinity of his property, having a killing range of two miles the issue is, indeed, public safety.

Two weeks earlier Utley, seated far right red shirt, verbally sparred with neighbor Bob Richardson, speaking to left in blue shirt, over the necessity of adding legal teeth to a subdivision protective covenant shooting prohibition. The county supervisors, including Dan Murray and Linda Glavis pictured here, have since been targeted by a state guns rights advocacy group to defeat the shooting ban request.

“We are not a bunch of fanatics” seeking to strip anyone of their right to own weapons, Richardson said. “I have shot and killed people,” he observed of his own past line-of-duty actions, “But it is simply not safe,” he added of recreational shooting in Thunderbird Farms.

At the May 1 work session Richardson said he believed much of the subdivision shooting wasn’t actually being done by residents, but rather by friends of absentee lot owners who gave permission for their friends to go to the property and shoot, resulting in a double-edged danger of mixing recreational drinking and recreational shooting by people with little knowledge of and no substantive connection to the neighborhood.

Utley disputes that contention.

“They make like it’s the Wild West out here; that it’s a systemic problem and it’s not. If you live in parts of Warren County during hunting season you are going to hear gunfire – the guys with their black powder guns, it sounds like World War 3,” he observed.

At the May 1 work session, Supervisor Glavis wondered if county noise ordinances couldn’t be used as an enforcement tool.

There is also a subdivision protective covenant prohibition on “unreasonably loud or disturbing sound … as to disturb the comfort, repose, health or safety of any individual”. That passage is found two sentences past the covenant 13 prohibition on recreational shooting.

However, there remains a significant difference of opinion between sides on the amount of the sound of gunfire originating in Thunderbird Farms.

And on the evening of June 19 the debate on all these issues will be re-engaged publicly, before the county’s elected officials. It will be interesting to see what kind of arguments are put forth; who shows up to make those arguments – and how the county’s elected officials respond to what they hear.

Prior to the May 1 decision to move toward a public hearing, several supervisors questioned whether the board should become involved in a property owners dispute revolving around violations of neighborhood covenants. However, the fact the request for inclusion in County Code 177-3 was presented in terms of public safety – which by definition IS one of the primary responsibilities of the county’s elected officials – held the day then, and again on May 15.

But hearing the debate is a long way from making a final judgment on the relative merits of the arguments presented. – As one sage sports fan once said, “Bring the popcorn.”