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 ...
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.
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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.
Exploded the meter here.......Seen the muzzy memo calling for the 'summer of fire' complete with ingenious delayed ignition fuses/devices?? Keep a sharp eye on the Santa Anna season these early efforts are supposed to be practice to gauge the press' response and public's reaction.
It seems to me it’s more like careless pot growers tending their crops. It must get cold enough in the Utah night to require a little camp fire. So sad that all that pot has to go up in smoke too.
“Go shooting at night in the rocky desert sometime....”
Who the hell goes shooting at night? That’s just plain stupid.
A modern jacketed bullet is composed of a lead core covered by a copper jacket. Neither lead nor copper will produce a spark no matter what you strike them against.
A tracer round, on the other hand, literally burns. That’s what makes it so bright. They are so damaging to a good bore however, that a serious shooter is not going to ruin his rifle for a few minutes of “fun”.
Mechanics use copper and brass tools whenever they are working in dangerous, explosive conditions precisely because they don’t throw sparks.
I respectfully disagree with you. Unless one is firing non-standard rounds, i.e. steel jacketed, steel cored, or other military round, which is of absolutely no use to a hunter or sportsman, it is literally impossible to strike a spark with either copper or lead.
I have no doubt that these wildfires are being set by terrorists. I read that this was one of their tactics years ago.
Confused genetics?
Slugs are made from LEAD and some are coated with COPPER.
Have some liberal try to make sparks with copper or lead and I will give him the alchemy award of the year.
Smokey the Bear's middle name is "the".
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