Electric City’s proposed “buffer zone” between homes and Osborne Bay might have been an enhancement of safety for those homes back when they actually bordered the city limits, but now it would, in fact, decrease their safety.

The fact is that hunting and discharging firearms in the proposed buffer zone is already illegal under city code. The buffer zone would, however, restore an earlier hunting privilege allowed on state-owned lands that were annexed into the city several years ago.

Since discharging firearms within city limits is illegal, that annexation created confusion for hunters used to hunting there.

Perhaps establishing the buffer zone is a good idea, but calling it an enhancement to local safety seems a stretch. Enforcing the current law, which the city council thinks would be difficult, would enhance safety more than allowing shooting to occur closer to homes.

But because the current situation creates confusion among hunters, the discussion has centered around changing the law to accommodate those traditional bounds of sportsmen, and at least post signs telling them not to shoot closer than 500 feet from the houses that rim Osborne Bay by posting signs stating the restriction.

After all, the reasoning goes, no one has been shot in the area, where hunting has always occurred in the past.

But if those homeowners truly have concerns about their safety, the obvious question is whether those signs would not work just as well farther out.

It may well be that creating the new buffer zone would be the most practical solution to the confusion, but it’s definitely not safer than current law.

We hope the city council takes into consideration the legal liability to which every citizen of Electric City could be exposed if the city chose to make some of them less safe and something bad, someday, did happen.

— Scott Hunter

editor and publisher