The Shooting Range Protection Act of 2000, found at SC Code Sections 31-18-10 to 31-18-60, provides significant protections for existing, established shooting ranges from local regulations.
The law defines a shooting range under its protection as an area operated for the firing of firearms. There are two requirements for a facility to meet the law’s definition:
- The firing of firearms is the usual, regular, and primary activity occurring in the area.
- The area is improved or situated such that a person would not reasonably expect a projectile to escape the area’s boundaries. This could be a berm, a backstop, or a lot large enough that bullets would likely not leave the property.
Protections
Once a shooting range is established and in use, it is protected in two ways.
First, private landowners cannot bring a nuisance action for noise against the shooting range if it was established before the landowners bringing the action acquired their nearby property, unless there has been a substantial change in the use of the range.
This provision is essentially a codification of the common law rule on “coming to the nuisance,” which holds that landowners cannot sue for a nuisance that existed before they purchased property. For example, residents cannot move in next to an airport and then sue over the noise created by it.
Second, and more importantly for local governments — governments cannot enforce a newly enacted noise ordinance against a shooting range that was already established when the ordinance was enacted.
Similarly, if a local government amends an existing noise ordinance after the establishment of a shooting range, the government cannot enforce the amended noise ordinance against the shooting range if it complied with the noise ordinance as it existed before the amendment.
The Shooting Range Protection Act also establishes that in no event may a local government enforce a noise ordinance against a shooting range established before January 1, 2000.
Implications for cities
Many, if not most, municipalities already prohibit the discharge of firearms within their municipal limits, subject to certain exceptions, and so the law on shooting range regulation may not be an issue.
Such rules prohibiting the discharge of firearms appear not to be preempted by Section 23-31-510(1), which provides that a local government may not adopt any law regulating “the transfer, ownership, possession, carrying, or transportation of firearms.”
This preemption language does not mention ordinances that regulate the discharging of firearms.
Municipalities that do not prohibit the discharge of firearms, however, should consider whether their existing noise ordinance would be sufficient to control unreasonable noise disturbances from shooting ranges. The Shooting Range Protection Act requires no minimum lot size or separation requirements for a shooting range to be established. Instead, it requires only improvements and circumstances that make it reasonably unforeseeable that a projectile would escape the parcel.
Finally, the Shooting Range Protection Act provides that it “does not prohibit a local government from regulating the location and construction of a new shooting range after the effective date of this chapter.”
In addition to considering its existing noise ordinance, a municipality that allows the discharge of firearms within its boundaries should review its zoning ordinance to see if it addresses the location and construction of shooting ranges.