Why is booby-trapping illegal?

I'd be inclined to wait in the bushes with a camera and a powerful strobe unit.

Burglarly or "breaking and entering" does not carry the death penalty.

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It does if you break into my house while I'm around...

Grease?

LOTS of pine sap or some other non-injurious tarry sticky awful crap.



No no no DO NOT do this. We would not want anyone to have to really wash their hands or redo the upholstery on their car... Don't do it.. no no no!

Hey, whatever happened to the time honored tradition of sitting in the bushes with a garden hose?

OK, so booby traps are illegal and I can even grok the reasons why.

But how about remotely controlled weaponry? What I'm thinking of here is a robot arm mounting a semi-auto shotgun (or garden hose, or slingshot), a boresighted digital camera, a tac light and maybe a speaker. The arm would normally be retracted into an underground housing. On command from a central post, the arm would raise and be controlable. Once it's aimed, the tac light comes on, the speaker booms 'Smile! You're on Candid Gunscope!' (apologies to Sluggy Freelance) and the miscreant needs clean underwear.

Would the law consider this setup an ambush?

Cheers,
ErikM

I think some traps should be legal.

The trap must target only criminals to be legal. You can't put pits outside but a shaped charge inside a safe that will detonate right into Safebreaker's head when the safe door gets hotter then 200F would be ok.

Outdoor traps are very bad as they target non criminals as well. If I go into the woods that I don't know then I have to be carefull not to stumble on someones plot for fear of it being trapped. Admire from a safe distance and then leave is the best option. Trapping a grow plot should be a crime in and of itself.

Is there a law that says

you have to insert a when you're making a little joke?

As far as a safe,what if you died and a family member hurt themselves when they opened it,you would feel terrible.

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Q; what would Elvis say if he were alive today?
A; Help! get me out of here I'm stuck in a coffin.


vote early and vote often!

Political sign? Spray some "deer piss" on it and go about your business.

If dear or bear trapping is legal, why not take that up? Maybe leave some food by the sign to attract animals. I think dear or bear bating is legal in most places, but I am not a masturbator. So check with the law before doing that. Having traps set up by the sign would Kill two birds with one stone. Make sure that no innocents could possibly get hurt by it though.

Maybe get a sign frame that uses thin metal strips for it's structure. You can sharpen the edges, then gouge them to make several sharp barbs, let it rust a bit, and viola, a sign that no one without heavy gloves will try to steal.

Those cork screw like things that people use to anchor things from the wind, or to leash their dog could also be used, or just chain the sign to something solid, maybe install a permanent anchor.

The trap must target only criminals to be legal. You can't put pits outside but a shaped charge inside a safe that will detonate right into Safebreaker's head when the safe door gets hotter then 200F would be ok.

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That would get right interesting in a fire. Especially if it's some poor fireman.

I like my stuff, but none of it is worth the chance that a boobytrap would get the wrong person. I guess that makes me a wuss.

Mailboxes and other traps

There was the idea of filling a mailbox with cement or bricks for mailbox baseball-batters.

Then the issue of injury came up. I think the punishment for bashing a mailbox should be on the order of restitution or somesuch. Breaking someone's arm isn't quite what I had in mind.

...now, on the other hand, booby traps involving foul-smelling devices or dyes sound like something a bit more reasonable! The key is who is likely to get hurt.

As we learned from the tragedy of the rubber bullet, even things designed to be "nonlethal" can go wrong so easily.

Me & my dad know a guy who knows people who knows people. He managed to obtain for us a small bottle of genuine skunk oil . I don't know how he got it & I'm pretty sure I don't want to.

I have a couple paintball master mines as well as a couple of Tippmann Wet Willy paint grenades rigged around

On a more serious note I'm thinking about Caltrops.

You can always take the approach of folks north of here. Shoot, shovel and shut up.

Booby traps

I think they have been banned in most countries for many years.They were used in England with low pointed swivel double or single barreled shotgun type devices. in the country side to stop poachers.

Bravo11 said:

A couple of years ago some punks in my nieghborhood took a 4 wheeler and drove around through peoples yards running over snowmen. I live in the south and we only get about one snowman a year. My kids were really upset. I thought about building a snowman over a t-post or a big rock I have in the yard but then I thought--is it worth killing or permanently injuring a kid because he did a mean prank.-No.
Booby traps are bad. Dogs on the other hand.....

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An old navy buddy of mine wrecked his car as a teen by running over a snowman that someone had built around a trashcan full of bricks. In hindsight he says he deserved it for being such a jerk.

Spraying the sign with pepper spray is a good idea, but the razor blades are a bad one.

Anyone else ever use mouse-glue? You spread it out on a piece of cardboard to catch rodents with. Nastiest, stickiest stuff I've ever seen. It's also nearly clear.

Spread that around on the sign, and you'll at least condemn the perp to a few hours of cleanup.

Never, ever put it on a toilet seat

Has anyone ever heard of Feen-a-mint, is was a laxative shaped like a Chicklet, it was still around when I was in high school.

before the last election, my mom was working the campaign for a certain democratic candidate. she put up homemade plywood signs around her town. she put them up on properties and empty lots, and she had written approval by the property owners.

every now and then, the signs would be down, and the wire stakes bent. she assumed someone was just pushing them over, so she decides to replace the wire stakes with rebar driven into the ground.

a few days later, someone decided to run one of the signs over, not knowing about the rebar. his vehicle (one of those little sidekick things), was pretty heavily damaged, but the teenager wasn't hurt. he took the matter to the police, who contacted the property manager, and then my mom.

in the end, the driver was fined for vandalism and trespassing on private property. he tried to file a civil suit, but the judge threw it out based on the criminal charges against the driver.

that aside, if someone is messing with a sign (or anything else) on your lawn, i'd recommend one of those motion activated sprinklers for deer and crow.

Can you GUARANTEE that there is not a LEGITIMATE reason for the activity being trapped? can, in some fluke, someone have a good reason for, say smashing thru your window and running down your hall unbidden - say, to put out a fire and rescue you?

It's a question of failure mode, of false positives.
Driving a car into a brick-filled snowman or hardened mailbox may mess up someone's car good, but won't likely injure/kill them. The vandal gets his due reward, and the dodging-a-child driver gets an insurance claim.
Picking up a razor-studded sign and losing fingers in the process is a grave injury. The vandal gets more than his due, and the playful child spends a life sans fingers.

Setting a lethal trap makes you responsible for gravely harming innocents - and you're not there to decide if, after all, they are.

ILLEGAL, huh???

I guess I will be spending the next several hours gathering up the claymores, bouncing betties and boiling oil pots set over the doors. No fun I tell you.

Seriously indescriminate weapons should only be used in a wartime situation. Same reason why we cannot and should not shoot at a target unless it is identified or shooting at you first. Hence the need for some kind of light to go along with your gun.

The snowman over a rock is way different than razor blades or poison on a sign. Like another poster stated, a 2-year old or someones dog could innocently wander into the sign. Somebody running over snowmen has no excuse.

My brother moved into a new neighborhood and found out that some of the local kids liked to knock over mailboxes with their cars. His got knocked over once and then he mounted the next one onto an 8' Lalley column (a 4" diameter steel pipe filled with cement) sunk 4-1/2' into the ground in a concrete footing, then covered with a thin veneer of stained pine.

Someone hit it again and he found lots of plastic, glass, and trim parts scattered about.