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Fires Sparked By Utah Target Shooters Prompt Evacuations
Hugh Pickens writes "The Salt Lake City Tribune reports that more than 9,000 people have been driven from their homes by a wind-whipped wildfire started by two shooters at landfill popular with target shooters who won't face any charges because they were not breaking any laws. The fire was the 20th this year in Utah sparked by target shooting where low precipitation, dry heat and high winds have hit the West hard, exacerbating the risk that bullets may glance off rocks and create sparks. Despite the increasing problem, local agencies are stuck in a legal quandary — the state's zealous protection of gun rights leaves fire prevention to the discretion of individuals — a freedom that allows for the careless to shoot into dry hills and rocks. When bullets strike rock, heated fragments can break off and if the fragments make contact with dry grass, which can burn at 450 to 500 degrees, the right conditions can lead to wildfires. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert has called on Utahns to use more "common sense" in target shooting urging target shooters to use established indoor and outdoor ranges instead of tinder-dry public lands. "We can do better than that as Utahns," says Herbert, calling on shooters to "self-regulate," since legislation bars sheriff's officials from regulating firearms. "A lot of the problem we have out here is a lack of common sense.""
"A lot of the problem we have out here is a lack of common sense."
As the saying goes: The problem with common sense is that it isn't very common.
Bert
does the right to pointlessly shoot random shit trump a home-owners right not to have his house burned to a cinder
christ....
Don't ban shooting, just make the shooters responsible for any fires they start. I bet they start self-regulating real quick when multi-million dollar fines start getting handed out.
IANAL, but the shooters probably face civil liability if any structures are damaged, and possibly even if an asthmatic suffers from just the smoke.
"We can do better than that as Utahns," says Herbert, calling on shooters to "self-regulate," since legislation bars sheriff's officials from regulating firearms. "A lot of the problem we have out here is a lack of common sense.""
If you're relying on common sense from a state most of which fell in a big way for the Joseph Smith con-job that is Mormonism, you're gonna be waiting a very long time.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Government just blames us gun owners to take away our rifles. The 2nd amendment will prevail over common sense! America! Fuck Yeah!
Officer: What I want to know is did you camp-fire get out of control or were you shooting guns? If it was your camp-fire you could be in serious trouble.
... does the right to shoot guns include the right to shoot guns anywhere you damn well please?
Seems to me there's a parallel with the right to free speech not including the right to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater.
And recreational shooters are no different. In tinderbox conditions like this you can shoot safely, but you have to be careful. Don't shoot steel jacketed or steel cored ammunition, stick to plain lead or copper jacketed only. Don't shoot tracers, don't use gimmick ammo like Dragon's Breath shotgun shells. Above all, pay attention and be prepared to put out a fire. If you're not prepared to do all of that, then maybe you should just do something else until the weather changes.
I'm an avid shooter and probably own more guns than most of the people reading this. My knee jerk reaction is to defend "my" side, but I also want to smack down the morons making the rest of us look bad.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
Not seeing the "tech news" angle of this story. Two decades ago in the .mil I was a M-60 gunner (yes the reserves always has ancient gear, and 60s were obsolete since the 80s but we still had them) and I personally started a few grass fires with tracers. The .mil solution was to keep the military engineers busy by bulldozing firebreaks between adjacent ranges, heck sometimes between adjacent lanes. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out this is why some lanes were small arms only with no explosive rounds allowed. The mortar guys and other explosive rounds handled it by having firing lanes that resembled gravel pits or the surface of the moon. Don't know if they used defoliants (which are vaguely tech news, I guess) or it was a natural wasteland. I specifically recall firing a AT-4 trainer round (yes, I am old) into a gravel pit where even on the firing line you could look 360 degrees and never see any green plants. Now that I think about it, the M203 line looked about the same except we had that (supposedly toxic) orange training powder everywhere from the training loads. M203 training rounds are basically big paint balls but for some reason their paint is toxic and paintballs are non-toxic. Or maybe paintballs are toxic. Or maybe only pre-90s M203 training rounds were toxic.
People who insist on living in what amounts to a tinderbox are responsible when their tinderbox catches fire burning their house down. If you don't want to burn out, build firebreaks, build stuff that doesn't burn (clay tile roofs, brick walls, etc) and don't landscape with flammable stuff. At least two people have to do something really stupid to burn down a house, the guy who started the fire and the guy who built in a tinderbox. "I know its the opening day of deer gun hunting season but I should have the right to walk thru the wilderness wearing my furry deer costume without evil hunters shooting at me, we should ban all guns so only criminals are armed". Dumbassery all around.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
It's not about a "right" to do anything trumping anything else. If there was no law against (target-)shooting in the area in which the shooters were, how do you suggest they be prevented from having done something that caused an accidental fire?
If your issue is with the fact they won't face punishment for something they couldn't have possibly predicted and didn't intend, how is the lack of punishment in any way related to the fact that thousands of people are now without homes?
If your issue is the fact that there is no framework of law to prohibit, e.g., shooting under certain conditions, in a similar manner as, say, open fires when weather conditions are not safe for fires, then I might begin to agree with you.
Article is completely off-topic
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
We should blame the construction industry?
Ban home remodeling?
WTF?
The shooters tried to put the fire out and called 911. They acted fairly responsibly, though with some forethought they would have taken some preventative measures to prevent sparks.
Sometimes stuff happens. Using it to promote your particular social engineering agenda is bullcrap.
As another poster said, hold the shooters responsible for this. If there are not already laws in place that do so, there can be fairly quickly.
There are fires burning all over Colorado and Utah because of the very dry conditions. This one might have been caused by target shooters, but where's the outrage against the causes of all the other fires? Most are caused by campfires, burning trash, tossed cigarettes, lightning, railroad trains, etc. Target shooting is way down on the list of threats.
Utah is at its lowest fire year since 2005. The only reason there is any publicity at all is because a couple of the fires have spread smoke into the Salt Lake valley, making people think that things are worse.
Isn't this the basis of the First Amendment?
That is, to paraphrase, "I'm free to do what I wish (within reason) so long as it doesn't stop you from doing what you wish (within reason)."
Guns aren't illegal in any jurisdiction, just as me punching the air isn't illegal.
However, when the gun is responsible for evacuating 9000 people from their homes, it doesn't seem fair that I spend a night in jail if somebody walks past me while I'm punching the air.
It appearsthat animals aren't discouraged by the taste, but rather like it, and that can cause problems... Propylene glycol is much less harmful than ethylene glycol (plain old anti-freeze) - not sure on where polyethylene glycol falls, so harmfulness might vary between brands / exact composition.
I don't live in Utah, but "A lot of the problem we have out here is a lack of common sense.", sums up most of the world from my point of view.
More fires are caused by smokers tossing cirgarette butts than from sparks from bullets. I'm not going to attempt justify this statement as it should be pretty evident given the number of smokers is quite likely heavier than the number of target shooters and the relative proximity of smokers to populated areas versus target shooters.
Why is it every time we turn around, someone is trying to demonize gun ownership? Fireworks are statistically more dangerous to own than firearms. CIGARETTES are statistically more dangerous to own than firearms. Doesn't it simply come down to whose agenda we are most interested in? That and the general fear people have of guns? People need to grow up... not going to happen though. Fear is the weapon that has worked on them,
So when it's all over, effective criminals and ineffective cops will be the only ones with guns. What a wonderful world we are trying to create.
Anti-gun people? What are you REALLY trying to accomplish? Given human nature, how do you really expect to overcome or improve things after the "regular people" are rendered defenseless?
Great plan! Make sure to extract similar vengeance on:
Children with fireworks
Children who intentionally light fires
Grills
Campfires
Throwing out a lit cigarette
Yard/Trash burning
etc, etc, etc, you know, the things that typically cause these fires. This was just an accident, it happens. I think what we need to do is take a similar stance that we have on any activity that could lead to a fire, educate people on the dangers and how to handle it. Remember Smokey the Bear? Meet Slashdot's most wanted. I dare you to stare into the face of evil!
This just in from the NRA: The only solution to wildfires caused by guns is MORE GUNS!!!
Children are a clearly distinct category, and so should't be personally responsible. But in fact, people who create problems with grills, campfires and lit cigarettes, or who have children that start fires, are generally liable for either criminal or civil penalties depending on the exact problem. The people in question here aren't being held liable the way the way someone else would be precisely because guns are treated differently.
like their employers, can know what absolute inconsiderate idiots they are dealing with
That's a really awful idea. Which part of "absolute inconsiderate idiot" are you talking about, the "starting a fire" part or the "try to put out the blaze and tried to call 911 when they couldn't".
I think giving them the economic death penalty is going to result in eliminating a whole heck of a lot more "try to put out the blaze and tried to call 911 when they couldn't" rather than eliminating "starting a fire". Everyone knows starting a fire is wrong and bad so absolutely no education will happen there, but teaching people that trying to put out a fire is bad, or teaching them that telling the authorities about a fire is bad, is something both a bad idea and a new idea so it'll unfortunately be somewhat effective. There seems to be little to no upside.
The other point is why rush? If you're going to intentionally, methodically destroy some lives, at least do a good job of it and have their identifies verified. I'm sure you're be offended if you were wrongly named as one of the two guys. If you're in a big hurry because of the need to strike while the irons hot and set punishment while emotionally charged, isn't that evidence you're doin' it wrong? The only thing worse than vigilante justice in general would seem to be irrational emotional reactive knee jerk vigilante justice... I'm sure the names will come out eventually, give them time to get it right. Whats the big hurry?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
The US is becoming more similar to Afghanistan every year now. The rampant religious fundamentalism, the peasants with guns everywhere, the lack of sensible laws...
I would suggest that the government of the state of Utah may at least develop a plan for some new and ongoing Public Service Announcements, to address the concerns of the matter to the public, before any more controversial measures could ever be taken to more serious consideration for civil discussion and possible legislation, in the state.
It seems to stand to reason that the fires could have all been prevented, if the individual recreational shooters having started each respective fire would've been aware of the additional dangers posed when discharging firearms in a dangerously dry climate, and would've been aware that they were in a dangerously dry climate, and moreover if they would've been personally responsible enough to then avoid discharging their firearms in that climate - and if they would feel they must get some firearms practice, nonetheless, then to use use controlled ranges, as the state had so wisely suggested.
I'd say it could be more effectual for the state to suggest to individual gun owners and gun enthusiasts in Utah they must all exercise their own respective senses of knowledge and personal responsibility, more effectively - and for the state to perhaps set the example, as such - to the point of preventing those wildfires, specifically. I think that that should be far more effectual than any too impassioned arguments, in regards to the many popular concerns of the matter, in the overall democratic climate of the state and the broader nation.
That's my two cents, just thinking to the broader scope of the matter - erm, so to speak.
If you accidentally start a fire, you are liable. Why are these people who accidentally start fires with fire arms not just as liable as someone who crashes a car into your house?
I think they are being provided extra protection since they were using firearms. If you are start a fire intentionally or not, you should be investigated and held responsible for the resulting costs and damages.
If there is a pattern of gunfire causing fires (20 appears to be a precedent), then tax firearms and ammunition the amount needed to cover all costs. The tax payers and property owners should not have to cover these costs.
If anything gun ownership should require extra responsibility, but the NRA has pushed gun freedom so far that governments believe freedom is the absence of responsibility.
Whether used for personal defense or recreation, any damage done with a firearm (killing, destroying property) must at least suffer the same consequences as doing the same damage without a firearm. I personally believe punishment should be harsher for damage resulting from firearms because they are inherently destructive instruments which should necessitate high levels of training and responsibility to insure the least amount of damage results from their use.
But again, in the US, "a well regulated militia", is interpreted as freedom from gun licences, monitoring, education and responsibility.
The right to carry firearms does not grant the right to use them irresponsibly. These idiots should be held accountable not for firing their weapons but for negligence, the same as if they started the fires with careless campfires.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
that this place is nuts. It's a teeming horde of right-wing extremists gone nuts. The neighbors start off hating you because you're from New York (and therefore a commie with no values) and pretty soon you're hearing about how non-Mormons are going to hell (which is apparently Earth in Mormon theology, so in a way we're already here—I just wonder what they're doing here), women shouldn't vote, gays and Mexicans (which includes anyone with dark skin, even if they're from, say, southeast Asia) should be rounded up and deported to an island, Mitt Romney is a left-wing socialist like Obama, people should be able to have as many weapons of any kind as they want and carry them anywhere they go (even on airplanes) and this will make the world safer for "our freedoms" and so on.
Young men in ties that they tell me are young Mormon priests routinely come by and vandalize our (apparently) non-Mormon house: knocking the mailbox off its post, tearing down plans and yard decor, etc. Adults either won't speak to us or drop by to offer us "lessons" and invite us to church—without ever asking the first thing about us or wanting to get to know us.
People here worship Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh like they're Jefferson, Franklin, and Hamilton.
It's a crazy place. As soon as my job responsibilities here are done (no more than a few years, hopefully) we're gonna get out and move back east. 'Cause this place is just too f'ed up.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
So when did the iron age end?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Well, it does have a tech angle, how to start a fire using your firearm. Many Slashdotters will probably find this too low-tech to be worthy of front page, although it beats using the old rub-the-stick routine when you've forgotten your match but not your trusty revolver.
You're counting a whole lot of zero-acre fires. If you look at the damage caused, target shooting accounts for a good deal more than 10%. Also, target shooters make up a rather small proportion of the population and cause a vastly disproportionate number of fires.
Any target shooting outside of a gun range during a red flag warning shows a lack of common sense, and trying to excuse these people's rampant irresponsibility by saying other people sometimes act irresponsibly too shows you're the one with the political agenda.
No, that's "collective punishment"; not "common sense."
Why are the two mutually exclusive? As an outsider the problem I see with the US at the moment is that you have a society where nobody takes any responsibility for their actions (something which has also infected a lot of other countries) and you have guns freely available. This is not a good combination. Common sense tells you that either you need to alter your society so that people take responsibility for their actions i.e. learn gun safety before purchase, keep them locked away from kids, don't do target shooting in a dry forest etc. or that you need to take away the guns so people don't hurt themselves and others.
I'd much prefer a "responsible society" solution to the problem because it fixes a lot of other issues too and we know it works because that is how everyone's gun control used to work. However until we figure out a way to achieve that again people are dying due to the irresponsible use of guns and it is not just the people behaving irresponsibly who get killed. So until the we can figure out a way to gain a measure of self control as a society I would argue that gun control is common sense...but it is also a collective punishment.
Here's a good explanation of how to start a fire with a gun by Mark Twain
Good god, the comments above are boring. Let me just point out the next door, here in Colorado, we are hardly a gun-banning state. But it when it's dry the Forest Services (both state & local) can and do ban shooting on public lands.
Why worry about guns, when any day of the week you can find someone filling up their car while smoking a cigarette? Low-hanging fruit, and all.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I live in Utah. The only parts of the state where anywhere close to even a quarter of households have firearms are low-population areas far away from the Wasatch Front (and far from this fire, the smoke from which was easily visible from where I live). Also, having a firearm in the house certainly doesn't imply that you're a target shooter.
Gang activity and burglary may be lower in Kanab or whatever than in LA but that has little to do with gun ownership.
I don't have any problem with people owning guns. I do have a problem with people leaving spent ammunition and casings all over everywhere, behaving irresponsibly by target shooting outside of gun ranges during a red flag fire warning, and brandishing assault rifles in public. I have an even bigger problem with legislators who are more concerned with protecting irresponsible behavior by gun owners than they are with protecting the public.
Ok, referring to people with guns starting fires as not having common sense, perhaps insinuating people with guns don't have common sense - not clever, nor useful. Having a situation where the authorities can't stop people without common sense having guns and so can't stop them from starting wildfires - not good. Having a situation where the authorities can't stop people without common sense HAVING GUNS - living the American dream.
IT'S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAND!!!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It's on here because there is a significant number of people here "anti-gun" and a significant number of "pro-gun." I agree that it generally doesn't fit the format here, but the Trayvon Martin case made it here too.
in the fact that if it were started by 2 identified campers, they surely would have been charged. it doesn't matter what percent of wildfires are caused by what, it is all about who didn't get charged because of retarded laws. simple fix: if you start a wildfire by any means, you pay the price.
...
There is absolutely no way some guy firing rounds into any kind of grass caused a fire. I want proof. I've fired of a ridiculous amount of ammunition, of all types, into all kinds of things since I was a little kid. The only time I've ever seen a fire cause by any kind of round is incendiary rounds or a metric crapton of tracers pounded into a target in short order by a minigun.
Prove it.
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
I wish I had some points to mod you up. You are correct. They could be using steel shot in shotguns for waterfowl hunting, but most likely the spark would be from secondary contact between a steel target (or can) and a rock or second piece of steel, I reckon.
Problem solved.
Complete horseshit. First of all, no lead round hitting a rock is going to start a fire. I don't care if it's sitting in gasoline. The only way this was going to happen is with incendiary or tracer rounds. If the target shooters were using that sort of ammo, that's an entirely different situation.
Second, even if it did, if the fire potential is THAT high the fire was going to start... period. It's just a matter of what sets it off.
What is more likely is the shooters were smoking, started the fire by tossing a cigarette and blamed it on their ammo so they wouldn't get fined.
American Definition: Someone who's cultural identity depends on owing a tool specifically designed to kill.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
There is absolutely no way some guy firing rounds into any kind of grass caused a fire. I want proof.
See the Salt Lake City Tribune article. The people who started the fire by shooting tried to put it out, then called 911 to report the fire. But by then it was too late.
They may not be subject to criminal charges, but they still have civil liability. They'll be sued for millions of dollars.
Gun registration makes it very easy to confiscate all guns. I doubt the NRA would mind registration all that much if they could somehow be certain that history wouldn't repeat itself.
Wow, that's pretty judgmental of them...er...
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
That's your sig. Maybe they're actually judging you on the content of your character.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
let's ban the major causes of U.S manmade fires before we worry about the insignificant contribution of firearms
Not seen such a blatant anti-gun story that pretends not to be in a long time.
screw you.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As Descartes observed, common sense is the one virtue that is not in short supply. No matter who you talk to that person will be convinced that he or she has no need of more common sense.
I seemed to remember this happening in California and was able to dig up this story. That may or may not be the one I remember. I don't know if they were violating the law by target shooting, or if they were prosecuted for starting a fre regardless of cause. Regardless, as others have noted, common sense is in short supply. Being pro-gun is one thing. Having a state legislature that refused to ban target shooting on public lands in red-flag conditions is just INSANE.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Sounds like you showed up in a conservative place spouting off your New York City Liberal Bullshit and expecting the inhabitants of your new land to change everything about their lifestyle and culture to your liking, and didn't make any friends doing it.
What did you expect?
We don't ban cars because of car accidents, but if you negligently run someone over there are punishments for that.
It's not a Second Amendment issue.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
That's your sig. Maybe they're actually judging you on the content of your character.
They are, but they believe in Manifest Destiny, like you apparently do.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I am about 7 miles from the fire. These gun related fires are fairly common. Just a few days before this big one began, there was a smaller one in the same area caused by target shooters. There seems to be a misconception that you can't start a fire in those hills without using something like exploding targets or steel ammunition. I do not have any scientific data to back up my claim. However, I know someone who started one of those brush fires with a copper jacketed .22. There seems to be a disconnect between what people think is possible, and what actually is. The authorities haven't done a good enough job explaining this to the public, probably because they are too busy putting out all the fires.
Finally, these types of fires happen every year. There are usually 3-4 blazes that are caused by gun related target shooting in the area. Why do locals continue to shoot there? The answer is as complex as the people who live here. Tradition is an element. So is a lack of adequate gun ranges to support the better than 50% of residents who own guns. The BLM could build an amazing gun range for all the money they have spent putting out not only this fire, but fires from previous years. What is different, now, is that the area in question has experienced very fast growth. This has brought traditional family shooting grounds closer to homes.
This is actually the third fire in this area this month. The other non-gun related one was caused by lightning. The mountain is now a gigantic, charred, nothing. I don't think we'll have too many fire issues out there for the rest of the year, now that it has all been burned.
I wish I had the time to explain why rational, well-meaning people go out to that area to shoot. There are target shooters out there all day. Even while this fire was developing, there were multiple target shooters in the area. It is has common as ATVs and Motorcycles.
You start a forest fire through your negligence, and you get held civilly liable for the resulting damage. Gun, camp fire, whatever. If it's your fault, your wallet takes the hit.
That's probably more motivating to this kind of moron than the threat of probation for a couple of years.
When I'm king, things will be different.
Honestly, no, I don't think that's possible, believe it or not.
I live right in the red zone where this fire was and was forced out of my home on Friday. Here are some pictures for anyone that cares:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111855716135586173530/EagleMountainFire2012
Or steel shot.
Have gnu, will travel.
As a resident of Arizona and as someone who recently worked on the Gladiator fire, I can tell you shooting, while potentially risky particularly if you're dumb enough to use steel-core ammo, is way way WAY WAYYYYYY less risky than the douchebags smoking in the forest and/or driving around tossing their butts out the window. All this article is doing is stirring up anti-gun sentiment.
Okay, we have the most recent rulings that DC can't completely ban firearms(Heller, 2008), and this includes states(McDonald, 2010).
The most relevant case I found from 1997 is 'Printz/Mack v United states' - Which struck down federal law mandating law enforcement to do background checks on handgun buyers and 'other tasks'. Which I'd also consider a loss for gun control proponents. Win for state sovereignty.
Can't really find anything in 1939, do you mean 1933's United States v. Miller? In which Miller had passed away by the time it reached the SC, and therefore no competent defense was mounted?
Modern proponents have constructed arguments that would have easily disputed the case presented before the SC of the time. For example - the WHOLE REASON short barreled shotguns were allowed to be banned was that nobody presented a military use for them. There's plenty of evidence of 'trench guns' - short barreled shotguns, being used during war at the time, which would have been brought up by a competent defense. Regardless, this is a dangerous case to bring up, because it would logically lead to MORE protection for 'militarily useful' weapons like the AR-15, SCAR, and other military pattern rifles over things like hunting rifles, semi-automatic 9mm like the Beretta(issued by the military) over revolvers(no longer used), etc...
I don't read AC A human right
Guns are rare in my country but I rather thought the point was to shoot at something.
Like a target board, defenseless (and not necessarily edible) creature, commie or different ethnicity. Not rocks.
The problem with your average group of Utah shooters (and I live in Utah, and go shooting fairly often) is that most of them don't know who the governor is, let alone listen to him talking about being more responsible. The other problem is that most of these shooters are the least responsible type of people around. They drive big retarded trucks which they've tuned specifically for maximum black smoke output, throw cans out the window, and listen to awful music like puddle of mud. They think starting huge fires with their guns is funny.
It's a shame that with such open laws the people here can't be trusted to be respectful of the land they're on, but that is the way of things in Utah.
or else!
Just an FYI: Why do you think the founders put those two things as first and second in the list of rights? According to them, it's because without the 2nd Amendment, you can't defend the 1st Amendment, and will quickly lose it.
If the point of the 2nd amendment was really to arm every citizen, then WHY does the 2nd amendment start with the words: "A well regulated Militia,"?
What well-regulated militia are most gun owners part of? None? That's what I thought.
And before anyone trots out a State law that says something like "all able-bodied men are automatically part of the state militia in the event of an invasion", well, that's pretty much the antithesis of "well-regulated".
With the first link, the chain is forged.
"Officer: What I want to know is did you camp-fire get out of control or were you shooting guns? If it was your camp-fire you could be in serious trouble."
"Um... Yes officer, I was shooting!" That sounds like a possibility! 8-)
I have never actually heard a first-person account of normal bullets setting a fire. Lead and copper are relativly soft, and even hitting a rock is not likely to get hot enough.
Assuming, of course, that they were not shooting old surplus steel-core bullets, or tracer bullets. In which case, I think they should be charged with whaterver the campfire user would be charged with.
Hollywood movies, where everything explodes, don't tell the truth. So, don't base your opinion on what you have seen there... or on what the "gun ban" people say.