Shooter-Trash
It’s past time for shooters to clean up our act.
By Jeff Knox
(April 6, 2016) Over the past thirty years or so, gun owners have done a spectacular job of improving firearm safety habits. By every measure, unintentional injuries involving firearms have gone down even as the number of guns has risen. That fact is rarely reported in the general media, but it’s something gun owners can be proud of. We are, by and large, responsible and safe. But there is one big area where all shooters can improve how shooters and gun owners are perceived by the general public. We need to be more conscientious about where we shoot, what we shoot at, and especially about cleaning up after ourselves. We’ve all run across areas that have been trashed as informal shooting ranges. The ground is covered with bullet-riddled boxes, cans, televisions, washing machines, broken glass, and a carpet of empty cases and shells, trees and cactus are shredded, and we all get the blame.
Spent cases are an often neglected source of litter that shooters too frequently just leave, even if they clean up their targets. The metallic cases are pretty inert, and fade from view as the shine weathers, but they should still be picked up. Plastic shotgun hulls and wads are a bigger problem. Not only are they unsightly, they can break down into some fairly nasty chemicals that we really don’t want leaching into our groundwater, giving our opponents ammunition to use against us.
Much of the target trash is actually not generated by shooters, but rather simply dumped by others who don’t want to pay the fee at the county landfill. Unfortunately, once the first would-be gunslinger fills an object with holes, the mess becomes shooter-trash and its existence will always be blamed on us.
There will always be those who won’t clean up after themselves, but that just means it’s up to the rest of us to cover for them, while doing our best to educate them about their inconsiderate ways. The number one rule is the same as with hiking or camping: if you brought it in, you take it out. Putting down an old bed sheet or tarp, or simply shooting with a pickup bed to your right, makes brass collection a simple proposition. Not to mention, that stuff can be sold to reloaders or recyclers. Shooting glass or ceramics is generally a bad idea, but if you must, again, an old sheet or a tarp can make cleanup a simple matter.
Another rule every shooter should incorporate into their ethic is the idea that if you shoot it, you own it. If some joker dumped an old washing machine in the desert, that’s on him. If you fill that washing machine with holes, it’s yours now. That’s a pretty tough rule to live by, but if we don’t police ourselves – and clean up after the inconsiderate idiots – the result is always the same: more areas will be closed to shooting, and we will have to travel even farther to find a place to shoot.
At a minimum, every shooter should always clean up their own mess and make it a point to clean up at least some of the mess left by the folks who came before. If most of us would practice that simple rule, we would not have the disaster areas we so often find. Instead, too many shooters find themselves practicing in an area that others have trashed, and they decide that their little bit of extra mess won’t hurt, and that cleaning up a little of the last guy’s trash won’t help, so the problem areas just keep getting worse and worse.
Of course, shooting fence posts, water tanks, gates, “abandoned” buildings or sheds, electrical towers, water troughs, etc. is just wrong. And then there are signs. What is it that compels some idiots to shoot at signs: road signs, trail signs, No Trespassing signs, safety and warning signs, “No Shooting” signs… Some morons just seem to be drawn to the idea of putting holes in signs. Unfortunately, no amount of criticism or complaining is likely to have any influence over these jackasses. It’s likely that they can’t even read. All we can do is report them when we see them, and hope that they’ll get tagged with the heavy fines that are typically levied for this sort of vandalism.
Shooting is a fun and interesting pastime. It can be safe and enjoyable for the whole family. When gun magazines, shooting clubs, and hunting organizations started focusing on the importance of safety, and shooters made it a priority to apply a few simple safety rules, we saw steady declines in unintentional firearm-related injuries. Now we need to apply the same sort of focus and awareness to the issue of shooter-trash, or we’re going to find ourselves fenced out with nowhere to shoot.
Do your part. Be a safe, responsible, and environmentally conscientious shooter, and encourage others to do the same. Remember “every litter bit hurts.”