You won’t hear gunfire, won’t hear anything but the hum of a fan, neighbors were repeatedly promised by the would-be builder of an indoor gun range alongside homes in north Tiverton.

That’s not how it turned out.

Even indoors, those same neighbors now endure muffled gunfire morning to night.

Over that constant louder-than-expected fan, they say they experience the near non-stop concussive thud of gunfire “akin to the way you feel the low toned thunder rolling through your body during a summer storm,” as one put it.

Police stopped by for a listen and acknowledged that they could hear both that fan and gunfire outside. But their noise meter measured 57.2 decibels from one neighbor’s yard, 59 decibels from another’s — both just within the 60 dB allowed. (The town code additionally forbids “pure tone” noise in excess of 55 dB — defined by the ordinance as "any sound which can be distinctly heard as a single pitch or set of single pitches.”)

Whether or not that amounts to a violation — and it sounds like it does — the noise meter should not be the final authority here.

The owner pledged silence and that’s what he ought to deliver. Tiverton should hold him to it, not wash its hands of the matter with a feeble ‘just below the decibel limit’ defense.

That anyone would suggest otherwise is disturbing. No town resident should be expected to put up with such a profound and constant loss of peace, quiet and property value. Certainly no town councilor would.

If gunshots from this place can’t be silenced, Tiverton must confront the fact that it approved something that doesn’t belong in such a busy part of town.