Not to get too far off-topic, I just want to speak on the matter of "probability of ignition" in regards to things like smoking and shooting, since many people argue that something creating such a small and seemingly insignificant spark is highly unlikely to start a fire.
I recently returned from an assignment fighting fires here out west. I can speak from experience that the conditions this year are incredibly extreme throughout the Rockies and Northern Rockies regions, and have my own proof.
In one instance, my crew was faced with a small group of trees, perhaps five pines, that torched out along a bulldozer line. Myself and two other members of the crew were standing withing twenty yards of the torching, just on the other side of the line, watching for embers carried by the wind. Honestly, it didn't look like there was much getting carried over, to me. Within approximately five to ten minutes we were dealing with between six and ten spot fires sparked by embers we couldn't even see cross the line, driven by wind. The spot fires moved so quickly that we were barely able to scratch line around some of them in time, didn't in a couple cases, and resorted to calling in aerial resources to cool things off for us before they really got us cornered.
If you haven't dealt with fire in these conditions before it could be easy to presume that it would be a simple task to "stomp it out" if something was sparked. I'm here to tell you that even with ten firefighters immediately on-site, and heavy tankers overhead, the pucker-factor can spike pretty quick, it's not as easy as it seems when the winds are cranking at 20-40 mph and the relative humidity is in the single digits.
As someone "in the industry" I would ask everyone to be understanding and supportive of temporary restrictions. I also have noted that in many cases the use of firearms while engaged in lawful hunting has not been restricted. I believe this could very well by a result of the few idiots ruining things for the majority, however do not underestimate the potential for even innocent target practice to spark something.
Another way to look at it is this; you're paying for fighting and cleaning up these fires, through your tax dollars (heavy air-tankers start at something like $2K/hour, 20-person handcrews are about $7,000 per day). It's much cheaper to forego shooting for a month or so than to deal with record-setting wildfires for weeks at a time.
