Jorg Nysgerrig
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Wildfires: No smoking gun
JOE PYRAH - Daily Herald
Utah County commissioners are not sure exactly how flying bullets cause fires. But on Tuesday they renewed a ban on the use of firearms in unincorporated areas anyway, saying that bullets appear to be to blame for a number of blazes.
In July, commissioners decided that seven fires this year were caused by bullet ricochets, and they imposed a ban. On Tuesday they renewed that ban through August.
"We've spent over a million bucks already and we don't have any more to spend," said Commissioner Gary Anderson about firefighting costs that supposedly could be traced to shooters. At the same time, he's disappointed that he hasn't been able to take family members shooting in the Lake Mountain area on the west side of Utah Lake because of the ban.
Nobody offered any scientific evidence that Joe Gun Owner's 25-cent bullet could spark a million-dollar grass fire. But the rule was imposed anyway.
During debate Tuesday, Philip Blake of Pleasant Grove, a lifelong gun enthusiast, stood up to say that he was a Navy veteran who had never seen a fire started by gunshots, despite participating in a numerous live-fire exercises. "I've been a shooter for 50 years and shot in a lot of places, and I've never seen anything like they describe," he told the Herald.
Gun industry experts say that typical shooters firing typical lead bullets could never start a fire -- say by a ricochet off a rock.
"If the metal were hard enough to create a spark, it would carve out the rifling of a barrel," said Rick Patterson, managing director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute. "There's no scientific evidence to support that it comes from the shooting."
Government officials don't disagree about the scarcity of science. But they claim to have anecdotal evidence -- that is, shooters at a fire scene who blame a ricochet. They also blame shooters by process of elimination: if no other evidence shows up indicating another cause, they assume a fire was caused by shooters.
"We're pretty thorough about how we investigate all the possibilities out there. I have to go scrounge around in the dirt and make sure there's nothing else out there," said Teresa Rigby, wildland fire investigator for the Bureau of Land Management who says she is a recreational shooter.
Patterson questions that methodology, and Rigby's conclusions. People who start fires have many reasons to use a ricochet as an excuse, he said, including a fear of being prosecuted if the fire was caused by carelessness.
For a cause to be assigned to guns with any certainty, one would have to evaluate a number of factors, experts say:
What kind of ammunition was used? A military tracer bullet, for example, is designed with a flammable chemical in its tail which burns to make the bullet trajectory visible -- and could start a fire. Armor-piercing rounds have a steel core. Steel is a ferrous metal that is hard enough to make a spark. But both types of bullets are rare in recreational shooting because they are not commercially available, or they're regulated. Most bullets are made of lead, or lead with a thin copper jacket. But experts say that these metals are too soft to create sparks.
What did a shooter actually hit? Rocks mostly likely won't spark, but authorities cite instances of people shooting old TVs, cars and propane tanks. That brings an element of the unknown into what will start a fire, they say. But if a spark was generated from a metallic target, there would be evidence at the site of a fire's origin.
Heat. Patterson said that typical ammunition doesn't get hot enough to start a fire. On the other hand, Rigby says that the cheatgrass that grows in remote areas has an ignition temperature of 400 degrees and that it really wouldn't take much to set it off. But the danger may depend on exactly what ammunition is being used. An article published in the June 2002 issue of R&D magazine, for example, found that a 5.56 mm NATO round fired from an AR-15 carbine traveling at 3,051 feet per second exits the barrel with a temperature of about 512 degrees Fahrenheit. (The article can be found at http://hotbullet.notlong.com) The author, Austin Richards, is senior applications engineer at Indigo Systems Corp., a maker of high-tech infrared cameras. He did note that bullets cool in flight, raising the question of whether it would still be hot enough to start a fire when it hit the ground. Most sport firearms use ammunition with far more modest performance characteristics and generate much less heat.
Type of gun and propellant. A rapid "burn" occurs in the chamber and barrel of any firearm. And muzzle flash can be visible as a bullet exits a barrel propelled by high-pressure burning gas. But modern smokeless powders are designed to be consumed rapidly in the gun; they don't burn in the open. Old-fashioned black powder, on the other hand, can spew out burning particles. But in either case, if gunpowder or muzzle flash started a fire it would start adjacent to the shooter, not a distance away.
Rigby said Tuesday that she is trying to get together enough resources to study the issue and hoped that perhaps one of the state's universities could take aim at the problem. Until then, or at least until Sept. 7, don't plan on squeezing off a few rounds in unincorporated Utah County. Fireworks and open fires are also banned until then.
The commission is trying to compensate shooters by opening up the county's shooting range at Thistle at no charge on Friday afternoons and all day on Saturdays.
Rest assured no one is violating your Second Amendment rights, says Rigby and Utah County Commissioner Steve White. It's not the county's intention to restrict anyone's gun rights. It's just that people can't discharge them where there's a fire danger -- whether shooters actually cause fires or not.
Wildfires: No smoking gun
JOE PYRAH - Daily Herald
Utah County commissioners are not sure exactly how flying bullets cause fires. But on Tuesday they renewed a ban on the use of firearms in unincorporated areas anyway, saying that bullets appear to be to blame for a number of blazes.
In July, commissioners decided that seven fires this year were caused by bullet ricochets, and they imposed a ban. On Tuesday they renewed that ban through August.
"We've spent over a million bucks already and we don't have any more to spend," said Commissioner Gary Anderson about firefighting costs that supposedly could be traced to shooters. At the same time, he's disappointed that he hasn't been able to take family members shooting in the Lake Mountain area on the west side of Utah Lake because of the ban.
Nobody offered any scientific evidence that Joe Gun Owner's 25-cent bullet could spark a million-dollar grass fire. But the rule was imposed anyway.
During debate Tuesday, Philip Blake of Pleasant Grove, a lifelong gun enthusiast, stood up to say that he was a Navy veteran who had never seen a fire started by gunshots, despite participating in a numerous live-fire exercises. "I've been a shooter for 50 years and shot in a lot of places, and I've never seen anything like they describe," he told the Herald.
Gun industry experts say that typical shooters firing typical lead bullets could never start a fire -- say by a ricochet off a rock.
"If the metal were hard enough to create a spark, it would carve out the rifling of a barrel," said Rick Patterson, managing director of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute. "There's no scientific evidence to support that it comes from the shooting."
Government officials don't disagree about the scarcity of science. But they claim to have anecdotal evidence -- that is, shooters at a fire scene who blame a ricochet. They also blame shooters by process of elimination: if no other evidence shows up indicating another cause, they assume a fire was caused by shooters.
"We're pretty thorough about how we investigate all the possibilities out there. I have to go scrounge around in the dirt and make sure there's nothing else out there," said Teresa Rigby, wildland fire investigator for the Bureau of Land Management who says she is a recreational shooter.
Patterson questions that methodology, and Rigby's conclusions. People who start fires have many reasons to use a ricochet as an excuse, he said, including a fear of being prosecuted if the fire was caused by carelessness.
For a cause to be assigned to guns with any certainty, one would have to evaluate a number of factors, experts say:
What kind of ammunition was used? A military tracer bullet, for example, is designed with a flammable chemical in its tail which burns to make the bullet trajectory visible -- and could start a fire. Armor-piercing rounds have a steel core. Steel is a ferrous metal that is hard enough to make a spark. But both types of bullets are rare in recreational shooting because they are not commercially available, or they're regulated. Most bullets are made of lead, or lead with a thin copper jacket. But experts say that these metals are too soft to create sparks.
What did a shooter actually hit? Rocks mostly likely won't spark, but authorities cite instances of people shooting old TVs, cars and propane tanks. That brings an element of the unknown into what will start a fire, they say. But if a spark was generated from a metallic target, there would be evidence at the site of a fire's origin.
Heat. Patterson said that typical ammunition doesn't get hot enough to start a fire. On the other hand, Rigby says that the cheatgrass that grows in remote areas has an ignition temperature of 400 degrees and that it really wouldn't take much to set it off. But the danger may depend on exactly what ammunition is being used. An article published in the June 2002 issue of R&D magazine, for example, found that a 5.56 mm NATO round fired from an AR-15 carbine traveling at 3,051 feet per second exits the barrel with a temperature of about 512 degrees Fahrenheit. (The article can be found at http://hotbullet.notlong.com) The author, Austin Richards, is senior applications engineer at Indigo Systems Corp., a maker of high-tech infrared cameras. He did note that bullets cool in flight, raising the question of whether it would still be hot enough to start a fire when it hit the ground. Most sport firearms use ammunition with far more modest performance characteristics and generate much less heat.
Type of gun and propellant. A rapid "burn" occurs in the chamber and barrel of any firearm. And muzzle flash can be visible as a bullet exits a barrel propelled by high-pressure burning gas. But modern smokeless powders are designed to be consumed rapidly in the gun; they don't burn in the open. Old-fashioned black powder, on the other hand, can spew out burning particles. But in either case, if gunpowder or muzzle flash started a fire it would start adjacent to the shooter, not a distance away.
Rigby said Tuesday that she is trying to get together enough resources to study the issue and hoped that perhaps one of the state's universities could take aim at the problem. Until then, or at least until Sept. 7, don't plan on squeezing off a few rounds in unincorporated Utah County. Fireworks and open fires are also banned until then.
The commission is trying to compensate shooters by opening up the county's shooting range at Thistle at no charge on Friday afternoons and all day on Saturdays.
Rest assured no one is violating your Second Amendment rights, says Rigby and Utah County Commissioner Steve White. It's not the county's intention to restrict anyone's gun rights. It's just that people can't discharge them where there's a fire danger -- whether shooters actually cause fires or not.
