Posted on 04/04/2012 1:52:54 PM PDT by marktwain
I can allow my next door neighbor to come over and fire his pellet gun in my back yard, into some targets, which can be calibrated so I know his pellets don’t hurt somebody next door.
Some gun ranges are built out in rural areas where 50 years ago the population density might have been 1 person per sqmile, and the odds of a round harming anybody was very remote.
Military uses the term, big sky little bullet, to describe this type of range safety and fire coordination feature.
Now take the same gun range built on say a section, a sq mile of land, and now instead of rural ranches next door to him, he now has subdivided housing communities with a house on every 1/6ac parcel in the subdivisions, all bordering his section.
He probably could have fired a rifle 50 years ago and nobody cared. Today, if he fires a rifle, the round is likely going to go through somebody’s house. Obviously he doesn’t have that privilege, unless he has property rights on the same areas he shoots into with the rifle. (Even then, other criminal laws regarding the use of deadly force probably also prevail over simply a civil interest.)
If I owned the range, and advertised people could pay me to use the a facilities to shoot their rifles, then there are also some public and private safety rules which should be applied.
If people bring their own ammo, then there probably needs to be some private safety rules on how far rounds may be allowed to be propelled.
If not, the owner doesn’t have much of a defense if accused by others he is endangering their lives and property, especially when neighbors are injured by firearm shots from his proximity.
Most civil torts place a burden of proof upon those who use explosives to show they aren’t harming others in their use. Inherently dangerous devices.
The doctrine of “nuisance” also comes into play here. If you have a hog rendering plant and the smells of your business waft over onto my property and make it impossible for me to enjoy it, you can legally be shut down, even though you were there first. This does not seem “fair” to our ordinary sense of how things should work, but it’s based on the economic theories about maximizing the “highest and best” use of any given piece of land.
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