Fire Arms While Boating

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I am going through a boating safety coarse now. I presume that there is no problem with carrying while in your sail boat. After all, there really are no people out there to be afraid. Except the pirates. ;-)

I am going to ask about it in my class. I do have a question of who has authority on the water and what obligations there are for a permit and showing it to officers, etc.

Does anyone want to add what he knows?

Thanks

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As far as I'm aware, the laws to carry on the water (inland) should be the same as if on land. Unless the water is a state park where you CANNOT carry per law.

Offshore, I believe you can as long as you don't leave the 'state boundries' where you permit is not valid.

I ALWAYS carry BOTH (carry/boating)on and off land/water. Not like they will get ruined. I just don't swim with my pistol on me ;-)

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No additional rules when boating. However keep a couple of things in mind.

If you are out in long island sound and feel like releasing a few baloons onto the surface of the water for target practice please feel free to do so.

As long as you are 500 ft from any dwellings or structures housing people or livestock you are ok. Just make sure you shoot away from shore.

Since a bullet fired relatively level will travel for at least a mile, make sure you aren't doing this in a fog bank and can see what is well beyond your target.

Finally, keep in mind that in some waterways that are active hunting areas possession of a firearm is prima facia proof of hunting. With that said, use common sense. If you are in selden creek with a 6" .44 mag, a reasonable person might suspect you of poaching deer.

If you have a chief's special, there's less risk of that being a problem.

Don

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dcmdon wrote:

Just make sure you shoot away from shore.

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Since Long Island Sound is approximately 90 % bound by land, won't that be a little difficult?

Do you really want to be out on the water popping balloons with a mini-14 or any weapon for that matter? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

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JohnO wrote:

dcmdon wrote:

Just make sure you shoot away from shore.

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Since Long Island Sound is approximately 90 % bound by land, won't that be a little difficult?

Do you really want to be out on the water popping balloons with a mini-14 or any weapon for that matter? Sounds like a recipe for disaster. 

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Agreed. This whole 'target shooting from a boat on a public waterway' sounds like terrible advice.

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Rich B wrote:

JohnO wrote:

dcmdon wrote:

Just make sure you shoot away from shore.

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Since Long Island Sound is approximately 90 % bound by land, won't that be a little difficult?

Do you really want to be out on the water popping balloons with a mini-14 or any weapon for that matter? Sounds like a recipe for disaster.

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Agreed. This whole 'target shooting from a boat on a public waterway' sounds like terrible advice.

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Wait, I thought this was Opencarry.org. Where reason and logic trumped irrational emotional kneejerk reactions??? Did I accidentally go to pcgunowner.org???

Lets look at it logically. At its narrowest point LIS is 9 miles across (Old Saybrook to Orient Point) If you are a mile off saybrook and shooting in the direction of LI you have 7 miles. If you are shooting a .45 at 800 feet per second in a downward direction, the bullet is stopped within 200 yards. You can see what is behind you for MILES.

I am not saying you should point a 300 win mag up at a 45 degree angle, 3 miles from shore. Thats obviously idiotic.

If you use a little common sense, shooting from a boat can be fun, SAFE, and legal.

Since someone may bring this up, and I can't assume it will be implied, you need to pick your day, pick your boat and make sure aht proper muzzle discipline is always observed.

Don

p.s. we discovered this fun activity when out shark fishing. We had biodegradable baloons we used for fishing. We were bored. There was nobody around. Why not?

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I am not even basing my remark on legal or safety concerns, but on that I do not support anything that leaves garbage in any natural area. Whether it be parks, state forests, waterways, whatever. If you bring it in, you bring it out. I don't see how you are going to be collecting your balloons, bullets and possibly expended brass from the sound.

Therefore, I certify this a terrible idea. Someone else can weigh in on legality and safety, but I say this is out of the question just based on the rule of thumb that we don't sh*t where we eat.

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I agree with the leave nothing behind concept, and practice it when I camp. But it can be taken to a point where it becomes a religion rather than a practical respect for the environment.

The balloons we use are made of a cornstarch compound that breaks down in a matter of a couple of days. You can literally eat one and no harm will come to you.

As for bullets falling to the botom of the ocean. I think that it is such an inconsequential, benign "deposit" as to not have any logical impact. Here's where it becomes a religion. By your logic, you would not hunt, because you could not retrieve the bullets. You would not target shoot in a sand pit, because you could not retrieve the bullets.

We all have to sleep with ourselves at night. If this is part of your ethos, I completely understand. Its just not something I trouble myself with.

Don

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dcmdon wrote:

By your logic, you would not hunt, because you could not retrieve the bullets.

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I don't hunt, but if I did, I wouldn't be firing anywhere near the same number of projectiles into the woods as I would be if I were target shooting. I also would hope my round stopped in the animal I was shooting with proper penetration. Otherwise I poorly selected my ammunition.

You would not target shoot in a sand pit, because you could not retrieve the bullets.

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Most sand pits that I know are harvested and screened, so I wouldn't expect this to be an issue, but any place where you are shooting should have some kind of plan of what will be done with fired ammunition. I certainly don't make it a habit to shoot anywhere I want to and figure someone else will clean up my mess.

Just a proper backstop is your responsibility for safety, so to is proper cleanup. We don't need anything else that the gun grabbers can use against us.

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20 rounds of 3.5" 12 ga is almost 2 lbs (30 oz), plus the plastic wads. This is what a couple of guys would use duck hunting.

In contrast, 2 lbs of .223 would be

7000/55 = 127 rounds of 55 gr .223 per lb.

So shooting 20 rounds out duck or pheasant hunting puts out the same amount of projectiles as 255 rounds of .223.

Or about 450 rounds of .22 LR.

How about all the sporting clays facilities out there. I was at Madison gun club shooting 50 rounds. At 1.25 oz a shot, I'm putting 4 lbs of lead out there every Sunday.

Figure 50 guys go through the course on a given sunday and thats 200 lbs of lead every week. All concentrated within 20 acres. They've been doing this for years. Water is tested, all tests come normal.

Now I'm supposed to worry about 1 lb of lead's effect on the great vastness of the ocean?

At the begining of the 20th century people thought that nature could repair any ill that we caused her. That was proven false. But I think things have swung too far the other way. Moderation is the key. We don't need to drive Priuses. But we also don't need to drive Suburbans.

A few oz of lead in the ocean a couple of times a year, even if practiced by every shooter in the country would do no harm.

Don

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I don't really care if someone is leaving a cigarette butt, a straw wrapper, or a hefty bag full of diapers behind. It is just a principle that people should be living their lives by. I cannot advocate any activity where people cannot pick up after themselves.

We will have to agree to disagree on this, but I had to speak up for the fact that I do not agree with this activity and I feel it jeopardizes our legal upper hand.

I hear plenty of excuses from people of "Who cares that I throw my cigarette butt out of my window? It is just a cigarette butt!" and then you see all the cigarette butts and other assorted garbage littering our streets and forests.

If you want even more 'zealotry', when I am out camping or hiking or whatever and I come across someone else's mess, I do what I can to take it with me and get it out of there. I have extended the old rule "What goes in with you leaves with you" to "Always leave something better than you found it" precisely because of people who cannot bring themselves to hold onto their water bottle or McDonalds bag for 5 minutes more.

You won't find me crusading for the environment, although you seem to have me stereotyped as one of these greentards we all read about. I don't drive a prius (quite the opposite!), and I don't believe most of what I read about 'global warming'. But not being a slob is quite a different qualification.

I see you disagree with me, I see we won't see eye to eye on this. I will let it go. You have your right to do what you want, and I have mine. I only implore you not to give the people who want to take away the rights we both hold dear to us any more fodder.

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Rich B wrote:

If you want even more 'zealotry', when I am out camping or hiking or whatever and I come across someone else's mess, I do what I can to take it with me and get it out of there. I have extended the old rule "What goes in with you leaves with you" to "Always leave something better than you found it" precisely because of people who cannot bring themselves to hold onto their water bottle or McDonalds bag for 5 minutes more.
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I'm with you on this one. The place where we camp when duck hunting is occasionally used by teenagers out partying. We invariably end up taking home a whole lot of crap they leave behind.

Re the Prius thing. I think "the opposite" is part of the problem too. How many of us know people who drive trucks just because they want to. They don't work in the trades. They don't cut wood. They don't tow anything. They just like the image of driving a truck.

While its certainly their right, its stupid. But I'm getting way off track.
I like small cars. I've spent most of my adult life coming up with ways to AVOID buying a truck. Station wagons, trailers, etc. Mainly because by avoiding trucks, I get to drive something that handles better, is faster , and gets better fuele conomy.

I'm done. Thanks for the civilized discussion. To the OP: Its legal, but consider other factors. Have a great weekend.

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I never really understood the problem with leaving lead behind in the ground. It came out of the ground didn't it?

Oh, you say that ain't the ground it came from. Well if redistribution of wealth is what the government is after why can't we redistribute the Earth's natural resources.

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One word:

Ricochet.

Awhile back, on another forum (The High Road, I believe) there was a report of some campers who killed a person camped across a lake from them by shooting at a target that had been set up facing the lake. The angle was downward, so the bullets hit the water ... but the angle was flat enough that they ricocheted.

Shooting from a boat, it's hard to get an angle steeper than 45 degrees at a distance far enough to make it at all sporting, unless you climb the mast of a decent size sailboat and shoot from the crow's nest.

Shooting on water = bad idea.

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Hawkmoon wrote:

Shooting on water = bad idea.

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Wrong - shooting on a lake small enough that a bullet can travel to the other side is a bad idea.

Shooting a handgun on Long Island sound when you can see for 5 miles behind your target is perfectly reasonable.