That person likely only ever sees bears in movies. Pretty much anyone with an ounce of experience with them know they use handles. Especially on pickanic baskets.
Actually just watched a myth busters episode last night about them testing out different things to deter a bear from a car full of food. Each time, the bear wemt straight for the handles to get in the car. It was weird but that bear knew how to get into the car for some reason instead of just forcing its way in
Bear paws at invisible barrier (window) between it and food
Bear's paw slides down the glass and the door until it reaches the handle
Then it's just a matter of the paw being pulled back and accidentally opening the door, or attacking/investigating the handle because it's the only part of the door to get purchase on.
Juvenile bears also learn from momma bear. That’s part of her job, teaching young bears what food to eat and how to get it. Standing on a waterfall waiting for a trout might even be more difficult to train than door handles.
A razor blade is not going to do shit to a bear with 2" thick skin that malleabley floats on top of a thick layer of fat. It's tough to make a bear bleed.
Tent camping and my car door was locked. Neighbors car door wasn't. I had a dusty bear print on the drivers side door/window. Neighbor had a bear in their car.
The best that broke into my MiL's cabin opened her front gate, fridge and cabinets. Minimal destruction inside. Some bears in North Carolina have figured out how to get into the simple bear boxes with latches.
I know people like these clever responses but I do think it should be mentioned that courts are generally not dumb and will monotonously tear down any half-baked excuse for behavior that is obviously done for another purpose.
Some publish photos of their debt collection letters after ignoring previous correspondence, asking Reddit to tell them that this has to be a scam. They ignore all advice with perhaps the secret wish that the tooth fairy will eventually make their obligations disappear.
Everybody knows arguing in court is just like arguing on reddit. Whoever has gets the most laughs with their witty banter, plus whoever gets the last word, wins automatically.
The amount of times I've seen redditors recommend that you just perjure yourself and you'll get away with a crime is absurd. It's like they believe that the courts were created last night and the judge got his job an hour ago.
And then what, you get charged with animal abuse too for using that excuse? You're not allowed to injure wild animals just to keep your sandwiches safe.
Actually it's just the extreme lethal booby traps. A shot gun on a trip wire was the federal precedent set.
The problem is if people live the courts will let anyone attempt to shoot you for anything and you'll have to pay to get it thrown out. But that's true of completely unintentional accidents, like your neighbor suing you because their kid climbed the fence and drowned in your pool.
A shotgun on a trip wire when the owners were NOT present on the property
There is a fine line on that precident that hasn't been put to the test yet. I remember leagle eagle mentioning something about how if the couple had been on the property they could have been OK with the trap.
Yea that too. It's specifically an unattended, lethal trap. The reasoning is pretty straight forward: Someone's life isn't worth protecting your property when there's no threat to your person.
If you're a 10 year old home alone afraid for yourself because two grown men are breaking in you can absolutely merc the shit out of them.
A booby trap may be defined as any concealed or camouflaged device designed to cause bodily injury when triggered by any action of a person making contact with the device. This term includes guns, ammunition, or explosive devices attached to trip wires or other triggering mechanisms, sharpened stakes, nails, spikes, electrical devices, lines or wires with hooks attached, and devices for the production of toxic fumes or gases.
If a person sets up such a trap to protect his/her property, he/she will be liable for any injury or death even to an unwanted intruder such as a burglar. It is illegal to set a booby trap on one's own property to prevent intruders.
Nowhere in this legal definition does it specify the lethality of the trap, only that it is designed to cause injury or harm. A razor blade glued under the handles is designed to cause harm and you would be liable for that injury.
like your neighbor suing you because their kid climbed the fence and drowned in your pool.
Actually it's just the extreme lethal booby traps.
I don't think that's correct. Can you cite the law? Someone else linked a legal definition, and everything else I've seen says that causing bodily injury is enough to qualify
It's not just lethal, it's anything that causes injury of any sort. That was the case that set the precedent, yes, but that doesn't mean said precedent only covers similarly lethal traps.
It doesn't have to be lethal, severe bodily harm will do it. Booby traps are a dumb idea anyway unless you're trying to hunker down in a zombie apocalypse
This might be a stupid question but does it count as booby trapping if it's an active intruder? Like I know laying traps for would-be intruders is illegal but if there's someone actively trying to break in, isn't that just self defense if it's a non lethal trap?
Yes it's still illegal because any situation where you could set up a booby trap would be one you could have just escaped or something
Only exceptions would be if someone was like actively breaking through your door with an axe and you somehow quickly set up a broom with a knife on it to fall over and hit them or something that was going to happen in the next few seconds while you couldn't reasonably retreat
As far as I can tell, it's an untested legal gray area if you booby trap the domicile you are currently occupying. If you set one and leave, that's definitely illegal. But if you are in the house and set a trap and catch someone, maybe you're ok maybe not.
I did this but behind my radio after the third one got stolen in a month. Not only can you be sued (I wasn’t) but you now have to deal with who knows what disease in the tweaker blood that is everywhere in your car
I think thats a little far, arson of an occupied dwelling is usually attempted murder, but somebodys boat gets torched, either they pissed someone off that much, or they did it themselves for the insurance money, and the cops arent gonna put much effort into either scenario.
I hotglued concertina wire behind my radio. Dude reaches up to yank the wire harness out jams his hand into it. You can tell it surprised him cause he shook his bloody hand enough to get it everywhere. He didn’t come back though and for the previous three weeks he had stolen my radio and battery every Sunday night so i considered it a win. I had even put a padlock on the truck hood and it got pried off and battery taken anyway
"Stupid as it is" is not stupid at all there are laws against booby traps for an enormous array of extremely good fucking reasons and I'm so exhausted with this argument online it's been done so many fucking times.
Yeah, of course. The nature of laws and language and people means no law is ever going to be proofed against absurdity. But this is one of those situations where it's like how do people think laws are written? Do you think someone was just sitting around one day and was like "wouldn't it be hilarious if booby traps were illegal?"
No. Of course fucking not. In reality what happened was decades if not centuries went by where booby traps were casually common until they wounded, scarred, maimed, and killed enough people that someone sat down and looked over the numbers and was like "Geez, these things seem to be doing a lot more harm than good. Maybe the few random potatoes we're saving from being stolen aren't worth all these neighborhood kids showing up with missing arms and legs because they were trying to retrieve a stray baseball from their neighbors property."
Especially when there are plenty of very legal and safe remedies, like locks. Even barbed wire is fine as long as it's conspicuous. You don't need to boobytrap your stuff.
I was playing in the back, very quiet section of a car park while my parent was grabbing some sort of plumbing shit from a shop. I was just doing what a kid does, running around, jumping over stuff, see how long i could hang off a wall, etc.
Top of the wall felt a bit weird, so i pulled myself up to look and someone had cemented broken glass all across the top of the brick wall. Thank christ someone had sanded them all down with something, because I would have lost several fingers just for being a kid.
Booby traps are fucking stupid and we should all have known a good subsection of redditors would think it's "stupid" to prevent them.
no, "i want to kill people who are stealing from me for who knows what reason" is not a good reason either
edit: every weird conservative beneath this post inventing magical scenarios about people who are pointlessly burning down their house with their entire family in it are just masking the fact that they want to legally murder someone for stealing their catalytic converter.
your shit is less important than a human life. people make mistakes and do bad things, maybe they're on drugs or poor or whatever, but you dont get to kill people over a tv, internet tough guy
You've actually struck right at the core beliefs that make someone conservative or liberal. What is more important to you? Property rights, or human rights?
If your answer is human rights, read le Guin's The Dispossessed if you haven't already. If your answer is property rights, definitely read it. It will break your brain in a fun way.
You're only allowed to use self-defense if you have a reasonable expectation that you will be harmed if you don't. In most circumstances a burglar entering your home presents reasonable danger. A fleeing burglar does not, and injuring or killing a fleeing burglar is very illegal.
Sorry Rambo, but the law of the land is that you don't get to kill people over stuff.
I never said anything about anyone fleeing. You said it your self. Depends entirely on the state. But if some dude breaks into your house and you shoot him I don’t see anything wrong with that.
You're allowed to use force in self defense if you genuinely believe your life is in danger. However, you can't kill someone over property, and if you shoot and kill someone who isn't posing a threat to you, you can be tried for murder.
If you shoot a burglar who's fleeing, and they have entry wounds in the back and there's blood in the street outside, you can expect it won't end well for you.
Your comment implies that you're a gun owner and are eagerly anticipating an event like this. I would suggest you read your local laws about allowed use of force and do some serious rethinking
It is perfectly valid, especially in cases where the they enter a place they shouldnt be, on business that is already criminal by their presence and could be violent, and the person(s) are likely armed, desperate, using mind altering substances, and/or wish me harm. Why should i give up my things for someone who (as i said before) is ALREADY committing crimes by trespassing with intent to steal/do harm. He values my things more than his life, i wont call him a liar, but i sure as hell will let him hash it out with god
It really sucks when I'm reminded that basic human decency is something some people just don't have. "Murder is bad" isn't the kind of thing you expect to need to teach someone, but here we are.
Murder is bad. Even if they have your stuff. Stuff is not worth killing someone. This message brought to you by the letter "E". For "Every human life is important. Even if they have your stuff."
Yeah but "I can do whatever I want to anyone who might do anything illegal or remotely harmful to me" is toddler-level vindictive thinking so it will always be popular.
Reddit, collectively does not understand that the law works in ways that might not match up with our personal values, and no one seems to want to read into exactly WHY certain laws exist.
I get in these arguments all the time. Booby traps is one of the big ones. "It's your property, you should be able to protect it!" and you absolutely can, but you need someone who is physically protecting it so that, I don't know...a child doesn't see an attractive nuisance and cut his fingers off? Or a first responder who needs to move the cooler for some reason injures himself?
Then there's the idea of the lawsuit. Lost on everyone is the fact that you can sue anyone for anything (chances of winning/settling will vary). During the peak of the Kia Boyz stuff, one kid stole a car, crashed it and one or several passengers in his car died. The subject of the parents of the dead kids filing suit came up. The Reddit Juris Doctorates came out with top-not, Bar-approved nonsense like:
"No, their kids were associating with the driver, so they can't sue. It's their fault."
"No, Kia did nothing wrong, so you can't sue them."
"No they can't sue the owner of the car because they're the victim."
Like - you routinely name multiple parties in these types of suits because you are going to want to depose them in discovery to see if maybe they actually did do something negligent that's worth seeking damages. Maybe the driver threatened the kids. Maybe the driver stole the car, picked the kids up and claimed that his dad just bought the car. Maybe Kia has a duty, after being aware of how easy certain models can be stolen, to quickly recall and fix the security issue adequately. Maybe they DID and the car owner didn't bother with the fix. Maybe the car owner didn't get it stolen in the conventional "Kia Boyz" sense and instead, left it running in a parking lot, unlocked, with the keys in it.
The outcome for all these scenarios could very well be "nope, not liable for any of this, nice try" - but you can sure as shit count on these and probably other parties being named in a suit.
Yes and no. Most states allow families of victims to sue in civil court for the death. Even if they were in the process of committing a crime. So unless said thief also has no family, you may get popped in court anyway. The family likely would not win but you still got lawyers and court costs.
For reference, when getting my conceal carry the instructor specifically made the class aware multiple times that you should also carry a lawyer on retainer if you decide to carry regularly. Perp may be dead but shit doesn’t end there.
A friend told me he heard this from a cop when he was being hassled by gang member. "make sure when you shoot him that you kill him so he won't come back and the others will leave you alone".
And yet homeowners are no longer advised to display Beware of Dog signs as it supports the fact that the dog is a danger to others. Damn catch-22, can't win.
What you're referring to is Bodine v. Enterprise High School, and the successful lawsuit had nothing to do with whether or not the person who fell through the skylight was a thief. The skylight was painted black, unmarked, and there were students on the roof on a regular basis. There was also another skylight fall incident a few years earlier in the same school district where the student was authorized to be on the roof and died.
The overwhelming majority of those "can you believe someone sued over this!?" storied are exaggerated or fabricated, largely to push tort reform in the late 80s-90s. Kinda like how Liebeck had severe burns from way too hot coffee and only wanted $20k from McDonalds to cover her medical expenses. McDicks refused to pay, went to court, and the jury found their misconduct so egregious that she was awarded $640k.
Hard to say. You cant set Booby traps on your property because the can impede emergency workers, but I'm not sure what the law says about booby trapping an object.
Seriously, though, I bought a Kia right before the Kia Boys carjacking trend blew up and taught the world how to steal my car with just a screwdriver and phone charger. Needless to say I was paranoid as shit until they finally rolled out the update.
It's not just emergency workers it's that traps are indiscriminate.
A kid walking by could run their hand under the handle or it could fall off the truck and a Good Samaritan tries to get it out of the road and lays their fingers open.
It's to protect the thieves, too. You don't have the right under the law to slice someone's hand open, even if they try to steal from you.
If you caught the thief in the act and decided to teach them a lesson by dragging a knife across their palm, you'd expect to go to prison, wouldn't you? Same principle, whether it's retaliatory or preemptive.
6 it's on has property, you can set booby traps, but there has to be clearly visible signage of booby trabs, so I imagine the same goes for all your property
Not civil charges. Criminal ones. Which are executed by the state, not a person.
Booby traps are illegal for good reasons. More often than hurting thieves they hurt other innocent people.
But why would an innocent person be touching my things/on my property?
Lots of reasons. Firefighters cause your house caught fire, paramedics doing a wellness check, police doing an investigation because you keep yapping about thieves stealing your shit, your 7 year old grandson running around your yard and climbing into your parked boat, you passed away and your son is going through your belongings to sort your shit out, blah blah.
Especially if the 1st person had ended up moving the container before dropping it and then you come along trying to be a good citizen and move it out of the walkway only to cut your fingers.
How many thieves would have the gumption to own up to the fact that they were stealing though? Maybe if they're a long-time impoverished criminal with absolutely nothing to lose....
Yea, in the early 2000s I had a house that the local teenagers would use as a cut through and they'd go through my backyard messing things up. Drove me nuts so I wanted to glue tacs on the part of the fence they would jump and my Dad was like uhhhh no. 😂 I was like 20 and thought this was a great idea. He said it's a great idea if I wanna get in trouble lmao.
I've seen that before but people refuse to explain. How in the FUCK is he going to press charges if he is hurt as a direct consequence of his own ILLEGAL actions?
And how is the thief gonna proof it? If you are smart enough to not post the evidence in internet and then remove the razors and clean the box there will.be no evidence.
We call countries that cut fingers off for theft barbaric yet a lot of people have no trouble maiming people for this or potentially killing someone for messing with their food by boobytrapping it
In court: "Yeah so I was tryna steal this guys cooler but he had put razor blades under it" He gon have to plead guilty or hes cooked if he takes that to court
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u/MrSkriggleSFW 5d ago
Stupid as it is...the "thief" in this situation could actually press charges. 100% would not recommend.