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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
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
Terrible idea, superficially a good one, but it would result in massive losses and deaths.
You see, legal shooting happens mostly in the wilderness. If you start handing out the economic death penalty to people who accidentally start a fire, then they would have to be economically suicidal to ever report a fire.
Imagine a tiny little grass fire starts while target shooting or poaching or whatever. You can "do the right thing" and call it in and 99% of the time the local fire department waters it down and its all good, and 1% of the time its not completely controlled but at least the FD is on it and it may wipe out a house or two, but at least the FD knows about it so evac is successful and no one dies.
With your ridiculous requirement, the shooters would be insane to economically kill themselves, so once a tiny little fire starts, rather than stomping it out themselves and calling the local fire department to water down the area, they run like hell. Obviously they'll get away every time. However 100% of tiny little grass fires will uncontrollably spread and sweep thru town killing everyone and destroying everything.
It seems a heck of a lot less people will die and a lot less destruction will occur if there is no liability to calling in a grass fire. Your plan would fail miserably.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Yeah right, there was no way to predict it. After all, it only has happened 19 times this year before this one.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This is exactly why nothing changes. Gun nuts won't accept any responsibility for any bad thing
Gun nuts, no. Gun owners, yes. There is a difference. A gun owner stores his firearms properly (ammunition separate from the firearm), uses judgment as to where and when he fires his weapon, and above all knows the dangers and risks associated with a firearm and treats it as such. A gun nut is the guy you see posing for a picture by pointing the gun into the camera and rides around shooting road signs with a .22. There is a big difference between the two.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
So destroying thousands of acres of public and private land, costing the state millions of dollars in firefighting costs, risking the lives of firefighters, and causing >9000 people to evacuate their homes and businesses doesn't really matter as long as nobody got killed and no homes were destroyed?
Even if the target shooters had the money to pay the firefighting costs (extremely unlikely), the burned lands, the threat to others' lives and property, and the loss of >9000 people's time would be worth a criminal conviction.
There have been around a dozen fires started by target shooters in Utah this year, and some were larger than this; this one gets the news because it was closer to homes.
Years ago the legislature seized power to keep counties and municipalities from enforcing anything related to shooting, and they've repealed any and all restrictions on gun use they could find. They too are responsible for the fires.
I don't have any idea who you think you're replying to. I'm not claiming gun ownership should be outlawed, and I don't see anybody who's making that claim.
You admit "Utah needs to change their local laws concerning the time and place it is appropriate to shoot" and that's precisely what I'm saying.
Your claim that these people did nothing illegal runs afoul of the reckless burning ordinance; this was a class A misdemeanor. But that's not enough to dissuade people from destroying land and endangering others' lives, because people are too stubborn to believe their irresponsible actions really cause any risk of fire, even when 19 fires had already been started by shooters in Utah this year.
Target shooting on public land during a red flag warning should be illegal, and it's farcical that the Legislature has not only refused to put in place reasonable regulations but has barred counties and municipalities from doing so.
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.
You haven't heard of the 1st amendment?
Hint: It precedes the 2nd amendment you're so zealous about.
OK, fine. Then let's agree that you leave the 2nd Amendment alone, and we'll leave the 1st Amendment alone.
See, that's exactly the kind of crap I'm talking about. You don't mind at all trying to take away people's rights under the 2nd Amendment, but you scream bloody murder when it's a right YOU care about.
Once you go down the road of removing/crippling/restricting rights, don't act all surprised when they get to a right YOU care about.
They came for the gun owners, but I wasn't a gun owner, so I did not speak out. Then they came for my freedom of speech, but there was no way for me or anyone else to defend my free speech.
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.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
You have an irrational fear of firearms.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
As far as purpose, automatic weapons were designed for one purpose: antipersonnel.
Ever since semi-automatic weapons have been approximately as accurate as single-shot weapons they have been the preferred family of firearm for hunters and target shooters alike because they're easier to use. The M1 Garand was the assault rifle of its day, but before that, the musket was that, and before that the blunderbuss and before that the short bow and before that you'd carry a few spears and so on down the line until you get back to where we just picked up rocks and threw them at one another.
So while you're right that this weapon is descended from a weapon designed to kill a whole bunch of people at once, that doesn't make it an assault weapon... in the eyes of the law. I understand that you don't think that's relevant, but it is. The truth is that an assault rifle makes a dandy hunting rifle, and the same things that make an assault rifle better for killing people make it better for killing dinner. The only thing you're never going to need is fully automatic fire, which is why it's not present in the civilian models. Otherwise, a bullpup-configuration carbine with a synthetic stock is desirable to the hunter for the same reasons it's desirable to the soldier; it's lighter, there's less climb so if you're firing consecutive shots you're going to be more accurate, and the weapon is physically smaller which means it's less likely to catch on something while moving through brush or traversing obstacles. (You're supposed to put your rifle down when doing that sort of thing... but sometimes that's just not practical.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"