feh...
Posted on 06/24/2012 8:07:25 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Some of the wildfires scorching the West this year were sparked by unusual culprits: Gun owners. Or, more specifically, gun shooters.
As with the Dump fire in Utah, which flared hard enough on Friday to force the evacuation of 1,500 homes and 9,000 people, nearly two dozen conflagrations, officials say, have started accidentally by careless target shooters whose bullet sparks touch off dried-up pinon and wild grasses.
“Now is not a good time to take your gun outside and start shooting in cheat grass that’s tinder dry,” Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Friday.
While authorities can ban certain fire-related activities when fire risks are high, that’s not true with guns, the carrying and use of which are staunchly protected by state and federal law, including several recent Supreme Court decisions.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The bullet would just about have to strike stone or metal to make sparks. The chances of a fire starting that way strike me as rather small.
feh...
My BS meter is pegged. Blame guns and run interference for illegal alien encampments all in one convenient press release.
Go shooting at night in the rocky desert sometime....
you would be amazed at the number of times you will
see the round create a spark as it glances off of a rock.
Now translate that same scenario to the hot dry cheat grass
covered high desert where the wind blows almost incessantly
during hot weather. The result is invariable lots of
fires that grow very quickly due to the conditions.
Cheat grass is almost as flammable as gasoline....once
a stand of it catches fire it can burn at the rate of
20-30 feet per minute and more.
The Second Amendment protects the right to keep and bear
arms.....when, where and how those arms are used however
is not so protected. Laws banning the discharge of guns
inside city limits don’t violate our rights, so laws that
limiting target shooting under certain fire risk conditions
would be equally reasonable.
Keeping and bearing arms infringes on nobody elses rights....but when you start using those arms you
start running the risk of infringing on the rights of
others, and that’s where rights start mutating into
privilege.
and he looks like he blows too...
Guy’s smokin too much reefer...
http://wildfiretoday.com/2012/05/02/al-qaeda-magazine-encourages-forest-fire-arson-in-the-us/
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/national_world&id=8646527
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/al-qaeda-calls-massive-forest-fires-montana/story?id=16263981
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/03/al-qaeda-inspire-magazine-returns_n_1475695.html
Ayup, American gun owners to blame fer shur! Reel in that second amendment, to be safe from wildfires!
This is a pile of crap and you know it.
Lightning, smokers and campers are more likely sources of wildfires. Hell, Jihadis are a more likely source of wild fire and that’s a vanishingly small source of wild fires.
Now that that ship has sailed, they have to come up with something else.
Bovine excrement.
Soooooo—Governor—A ‘controlled burn’ by the U S Forest Service in the Schell Range at the western edge of Utah, near Cherry Creek Pony Express station is OK?????
That fire is still burning in the Schell Range & closed US Hwy 93 —a major N/S route in eastern Nevada for 3 days.
I have ridden a horse thru that part of the Schell range & it WAS beautiful.
I cannot begin to tell you how much I dont believe this story.
Leftist lies and media buys.
Some of our soldiers went to the jungle as guerrillas, and one cool night they tried to start a fire by soaking a blanket in gasoline and firing a rifle at it. They had no matches. No matter what they did they could not get a fire to start.
They’re talking mainly about a fire that started at a dump. I would imagine there might be all kinds of things at a dump that could start a fire. Shooters do need to take some precautions, but this sounds a little over the top to me.
Someone will have to show me a fire started by shooting anything normal into dry grass.
After about 35 years involving deserts, handguns, and rifles; I've seen dirt, rock chips, wood chips, and sometimes nothing at all but never a fire.
You can make sparks hitting a steel plate, I presume a derelict car body could make sparks as well, but I'd also guess it would take a miracle for either one to light the of driest kindling.
(That said; any responsible target shooter will predetermine that his or her backstop is safe, for the shooter, for other people, and for any natural risks. And, I've never heard of a fire started by a hunter pulling the trigger on Bambi.)
I thought Utah was among the most conservative states in the US.
How did they end up with this ignorant, propagandizing rodent?
Sounds like a good idea. Pile up some cheat grass around a pile of flint rock and shoot at it. Let's see what happens.
If the soldiers-turned-guerillas failed to draw a fire did they
manage to draw a squad of Japanese to the sound of the gunfire?
Did anyone say “what a freaking retard” yet ?
ibtwafry post........
What the heck kind of bullets are they shooting? Incendiary rounds?
I have shot all manner of firearms in what can only be described (both practically and officially) as severe drought. Muzzleloaders, handguns, shotguns, high-power rifles, etc. tall dry grass, short dry brush, etc... not even a glimmer of starting a fire.
Duh, does that mean the we can only “Fire Away” when we hear thunder?
All those in Utah, get out as fast as possible.
I know a quick google search is not the be all and end all of information, but I find nothing about shooting starting wildfires in the past. How is this all of the sudden a problem? I would need to see proof before I believe is. All of the sudden we get 20 fires from target shooting, but nothing in the past.
I’ve seen wildfires on Army ranges, and those were in the Midwest. ...went for the fire truck myself once. It can happen pretty easily. I’ll wait until the fire bans are gone before firing on my own range again. BTW, recreational firing is illegal now in my County (in CO), until the fire ban is lifted.
Exactly!
Lead definitely cannot start a fire.
Yep. I solved the problem by living somewhere that doesn’t have these drought issues.
My friend and I joke around that California is Indian for “Don’t live here”. Deserts also apply.
lol...
I have seen the patch from a muzzleloader smoke and smolder on the ground for 30-60 seconds. I have no doubt that under the correct conditions it could easily start a fire.
I have also started fires with flint and steel and know that it is difficult to do. I can not imagine sparks from a modern forearm starting a fire in any weather condition found on earth.
Waste water treatment plants use non-sparking tools made of copper alloy so the methane generated in the primary digester will not explode when maintenance is performed in the area.
Copper jackets of bullets and lead do not cause sparks.
You can’t even ignite a gasoline-filled can with a bullet.
Herbert doesn’t strike me as being very bright.
Years ago on my place in Texas, I had a 100 yard range. The target was a 12”x12”x1.5” thick slab of hardened 4140 steel hung from a steel frame by two short chains. It rang like a bell when hit.
My friend Mitch and I started a grassfire shooting at it with steel core 7.62x39 Russian ammo out of SKSs.
It can most definitely happen with steel core 7.62x39 ammo, which is VERY common.
For sure a public awareness campaign could help reduce fires from shooting. No laws should be considered.
Only with steel-core military surplus ammo. That is now as scarce as the tracer and incendiary rounds - statistically unlikely to cause any fires.
Now that that ship has sailed, they have to come up with something else.
Exactly right! I have heard this "careless target shooters start wildfires that burn innocent people out of their homes" meme several times this past week on the top-of-the-hour ABC Radio news. Could have sworn it was regarding the supposed cause of wildfires in Colorado, not Utah. Knew the instant I heard it that it was the latest propaganda ploy.
I have a feeling we'll be hearing a lot of this commieganda this summer.
“I thought Utah was among the most conservative states in the US.
How did they end up with this ignorant, propagandizing rodent?”
Utah IS indeed very Conservative, with exceptions on a few points. The number one, is “Education.”
The only thing that any politician EVER needs to do in order to be elected to Utah office (outside the liberal SLC metro area) is to have an “R” behind their name, and promise more “Education.”
You see, here in the great state of Utah, we have a huge number of people receiving public benefits (through tax credits, “free schooling,” etc.), and the least number of people paying taxes (because of all their kiddies). I have been told by a retired Accounting Professor (35 years or so of business/professional experience), that we’re the worst in the union for taxpayer base (due to the number of people who pay no taxes through children subsidies), but the highest in benefits drawn (due to those same public welfare benefits “for the children”).
Herbert was Jon Huntsman, Jr.’s Lt. Gov, and rode in as an incumbent when Huntsman left to play ambassador. I have always voted against both Huntsman and Herbert. They’re both big government liberals, but as I said, simply say you’ll tax the single people more to pay for someone else’s children, and you can hold office for life.
While I have shot steel targets with lead bullets, I have never shot steel targets with steel core bullets.
I expect this would produce a huge shower of sparks, complete with grassfire ignition possibilities.
Except they might in that the 2nd Amendment talks about a well-regulated militia, as in practiced. If you cannot discharge your weapon then you cannot practice and therefore cannot be 'well-practiced'.
Furthermore, such non-discharge laws may well be immoral. Consider such a law that considered any [non-police] gun discharge to be illegal: any self-defensive use of such a weapon would be, by definition, against the law. (Granted, most such ordinances would not take such a stance, but I do not doubt that the law-crafters may be mistaken, or the bureaucrats malicious.)
A wise opinion. The gov is having an out of mind experience!
For sure a public awareness campaign could help reduce fires from shooting. No laws should be considered.
*****************
On the news here they said it looked like some folks had been shooting at exploding targets. Public awareness for sure, but they have laws against fireworks in many areas, and will ban them in other areas based on fire conditions. It would seem that these exploding targets could be put into the same category to TRY to prevent the real boneheads.
Example of exploding targets. (Yes - it does look like fun, but only under safe conditions).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXIKP33tWcY&feature=related
Hush Noobe.............you know not.
Total BS
Very imaginative for its lack of reality against possibility, probability and number of gunshot caused fires ratio to total fires.
I’m thinking at best 1 in a million and you have shot near as much me and understand how hard it really is to catch grass, much less, cheat grass on fire then the odds are nearly nil.
NohhhhHHHH!!!!
Don’t them them why.
They will sit around all day in disbelief and then one day the word “combustion” will magically appear and they will get it.
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