Today, I’ve been hearing frequent gunshots coming from the direction of the farm fields behind my house. As any parent with children may be, I became worried for my family’s safety should a stray bullet find its way to my backyard. I called DNREC and was informed that during shotgun and pistol-caliber rifle season (which started Jan. 7), shooting a firearm is legal anywhere below the canal as long as one is 100 yards from a dwelling.
Bullets can easily travel at least a mile, so the current law, as it stands, is insufficient to protect people from being accidentally shot.
Apparently, if one stands 100 yards from a home and shoots in the direction of said house, everything is perfectly legal as long as no one is shot. I proceeded to contact the office of Rep. Pete Schwartzkopf and spoke to his aide Nancy Hickman. When pressed for information about the representative’s stance on gun laws, she simply replied that, since she was not Pete Schwartzkopf, she couldn’t share information about his stance on gun laws. She proceeded to attempt to placate me by relaying various other gun control laws that have been passed recently, none of which applied to the problem I was inquiring about.
Sussex County has seen incredible, exponential growth throughout the past decade, yet the laws have failed to keep pace. Congested neighborhoods now exist side-by-side with rural farm fields, yet men and women are still permitted to roam these fields shooting rifles less than a mile from developments with close to one hundred homes.
Although I respect 2nd Amendment rights, the county is becoming too densely populated to not have some laws in place as safeguards. Such a dichotomy cannot continue to exist; how long will Schwartzkopf and other representatives wait until they make a stand for safer gun laws that are more in line with the new reality of Sussex County?
Likely, they’ll wait until after someone has lost a child, spouse, or pet before taking any action.
Elaine Lack
Rehoboth Beach
Editor’s Note: Typical rifles with bullets that can carry great distances have been illegal in Delaware and on the Delmarva Peninsula for many decades because of the flat terrain and consequent danger. Pistol-caliber rifles, that were made legal for hunting recently, fire bullets that carry farther than the pistols of the same caliber that are also legal for hunting, but not significantly farther, and far shorter distances than the outlawed rifles.
Rep. Jeff Spiegelman (R-Clayton), who co-sponsored the law permitting pistol-caliber rifles on behalf of the Delaware Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus, noted that muzzle-loading rifles, which do fire bullets that carry much farther than traditional shotgun slugs, have been legal in Delaware for at least 20 years with no problems. “Still,” he said, “irresponsible gun use is irresponsible gun use, and reckless endangering is still reckless endangering no matter what, and that is illegal.”
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