Picking brass at range, not allowed!

[buck460XVR]

In less time than it took me to read this thread, I was able to Google the Indiana DNR and find how to ask a question......

The DNR Customer Service Center staff can answer questions at (317) 232-4200 or (877) 463-6367. The center is at 402 West Washington Street, Room W160A, Indianapolis. It is open 8:30 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.

If you wish to e-mail your question, use the form below.

I would assume this would give us an answer.

Originally Posted by AK Man

. Most likely a few dnr guys making a few extra bucks on the side.

Most likely why? Because a DNR guy is willing to risk his job by lying about DNR regs for a few bucks earned from scrap brass? If that truly is the case the dude needs to be reported, but unless you have actual evidence, making the accusation is lowball.

From what I understand, it is free to shoot at this range. If the cost is your loose brass, I can't see an issue as opposed to paying $20 an hour or more, or a high price membership fee.

[ninosdemente]

I actually filled out the email form yesterday. See what they, if they reply to it.

Jmorris, I understand if it was posted then yes agree. But not even a regular sheet at the registration table. Everyone has to see it there if non are to be posted at the range itself. Also, if they are worried about us stealing, then they are doing the same as well. At least don't do it in front of everyone else saying that we can't do it and you do it yourself just because you are DNR but most will agree that they will do what they want to do. That is my view, probably not will agree with me, that is ok too. Not to be whining... as mentioned I don't loose focus why I am there to begin with and if I don't get some then I don't worry about it. Won't lose sleep over it. Heck, I don't always go there looking to get brass either way.

buck460XVR, yeah, I agree with you. I don't have no evidence. I could have easily recorded the guy but it wasn't my intent to do so either way.

I don't do much hand gun shooting so I never tried a tarp. Wonder if they would make a big deal out of that as well. Never seen that been tried before. I did see a few times on hot days, some folks put up a pop up tent. Probably the biggest I have seen is a 6x6.

I guess we have a "luxury" range compared to others. We have some strict ones as well, but don't go to those.

That range, people don't pick up after themselves. They shoot and leave their brass on the dirt/gravel ground. You can see there are a lot of old brass compared to most recent shot brass. Easy to lose your brass with the rest.

[FITASC]

Tarps work well, as does rigging up a clear shower curtain on a take-down PVC pipe frame; doesn't take up as much room if you have to share the shooting area with others and let's you and everyone see each other for safety, going downrange, etc.

[briandg]

You could even use a folded piece of cardboard and set it to deflect the brass back and left so that it literally drops at your feet. I wonder about a large umbrella even.

There are plenty of easy solutions for simple problems.

[mikld]

Just a thought; is a State agency, the Dept of Natural Resources, really going to get into brass recycling? If a government agency tries to sell brass either for scrap or reloading, it will cost the taxpayers twice as much as what money is gained (expensive civil service)....

[Old 454]

Was this the JP Range ?

[Old 454]

The Indiana DNR ranges used to sell the brass first come first serve at 5.00 a bucket mixed brass.
Supposedly someone broke in to the Kingsbury facility and stole the brass.
I know for a fact one of the range masters there was taking the brass and selling it at one of the local gun shows... I seen him there doing it.
When he was working at Kingsbury he would bring in his wife.. and if you ask to buy the brass mysteriously he would state they had not cleaned it up. His wife was in the back of the booth cherry picking all the brass.
Now they say that at Kingsbury it goes to auction.

At Jasper Pulaski they just changed out all the shooting tables to small little steel tables. Range master said when they are done upgrading the facility there will be buckets... you can pick your own brass up but not others... otherwise will be collected and sold to help off set costs.
Willow Slue range is same way but super anal about picking up even your own brass.

Things are changing and not for the better

[briandg]

Just a thought; is a State agency, the Dept of Natural Resources, really going to get into brass recycling? If a government agency tries to sell brass either for scrap or reloading, it will cost the taxpayers twice as much as what money is gained (expensive civil service)....

Of course they do.

I just posted a few entries back that the federal government sells millions of pounds of brass scavenged from various government owned ranges. I posted a link to an address that hosts GSA auctions, there are probably hundreds of other locations at state capitols or other centers that sell it.

I also pointed out that my range has collection buckets, that they collect it in oil drums. Every state run range will have those collection points and the weekly crew will sweep up what they can. When there are a couple drums stored in the sheds, a crew will load the barrels to a truck and deliver $1,000 or so of either salvage metal or brass for sale to processors. The proceeds will probably go into a general fund or into an earmarked fund.

This is how it works. There isn't a huge amount of money being made by it, not enough to meet payroll, but the it has to be done anyway. It's what government does.

Check the links.

https://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/...51QSCI18539009

https://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/...41QSCI18505003
(scrap steel for salvage)

Condition is used, parts, are missing and repairs may be required.

They sold a pallet of discharged, non rechargeable batteries once. A broken toilet. A crashed private plane. a gutted blackhawk carcass.

A government agency is not allowed to discard certain things, at certain places, for certain reasons. My wife's office is being renovated; every desk, every cubicle, cabinet, piece of equipment goes right back on the truck that brought the new things in. Then, the men and women at the state prison either refurbish it or sell it at auction so someone else can salvage it.

[Metal god]

If it’s not your land, you don’t get to make the rules. If you are on someone else’s playground and want to come back to play, follow their rules.

If it bothers you the solution is simple, just find somewhere else to play.

Oh how I wish that were true . There have been hundreds maybe thousands of things that have been found unconstitutional that people have tried using that same reasoning with . I would have never thought anyone on this board would be OK with suspending the 4th amendment . It does not matter where you are at . Your property is just that , yours . I'll ask the question again . What else of yours should it happen to fall to the ground are you ok with the state or owner of the property keeping and selling for there profit or for what ever other reason they claim is reasonable ? If nothing else , then why is a persons brass acceptable for them to keep ?

[ninosdemente]

Old 454, (finally, someone from Indiana... haha) yes it was at JP Range.

I haven't been to Kingsbury since the beginning of the year. Not planning on going to Willow Slough either.

[briandg]

If nothing else , then why is a persons brass acceptable for them to keep ?

You didn't make any attempt to retain it as you shot it, hence it was discarded onto government property. Constitution upholds that you've abandoned it, just as if you had put it in your trash. If you used a catcher, that would be quite different, even if it was just a board that bounced it back into your bay.

[CommandoX]

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am until I read a post like this one.

My hangout is one of the outdoor ranges that kmw1954 mentioned. Within reason, I can pickup any brass I want to. I always ask other customers if they keep their brass and most don't. The range has struggled with what to do about brass since before I was even a member. (many years) I believe they actually have more brass than they can handle because of customer volume. I've actually bought 5 guns, maybe more, just because I had so much brass for one. I reload for every gun I have save my .22s. As a matter of fact, I'm still trying to decide what I should do for a 10mm.

While I fully understand how good I have it, like so many others have said, I wouldn't go to a range what wouldn't at least let me pick up my own brass. 4th Amendment power ho!!!

[Metal god]

Briandg

Haha , nice try . Same question but now use your logic . Your cellphone drops from your pocket and you make no effort to catch it . Is that now the states property since you made no attempt to stop it from hitting the ground ?

We can take it to the next level if you’d like . What if your gun falls off the bench ? Who’s is it then ? That seems silly I know but your property is your property correct , the value should not matter ???

Again what other items of yours that hits the ground that you would otherwise keep is OK for others to take regardless of how it got there ?

FWIW ( this is to everyone ) I'm not trying to be argumentative . I'm truly trying to see what other personal items one means to keep but for what ever reason lands on the ground is ok for the state or others to keep regardless if you want to keep them or not ?

[armoredman]

I shoot at an unmonitored city maintained public range. Sometimes I find brass, but usually the local junkies come in and snag it to sell for scrap. I did have one scrounger snagging my 9mm brass as I was firing. Didn't realize it until I turned and found all my brass disappearing into a bucket. Was not happy.
A local gun shop is planning on opening our first indoor range and the owner told me proudly that they would have that policy, brass on the floor belongs to them, I stated regretfully that since I shoot 100% reloads, I wouldn't be able to patronize his yet unbuilt establishment.

[5whiskey]

Constitution upholds that you've abandoned it

Metal God has excellent points to refute this. Just because it falls on the ground in your vicinity does not mean that you've abandoned the property. By constitutional or any other law.


With all that being said, you do in fact have a constitutional right from having your property seized for no reason. Even if it fell to the ground at your feet. You DO NOT have a constitutional right to shoot at specific public ranges. When you go there, it is entirely voluntary that you went to that range at that time. Ranges do not violate constitutional rights for establishing rules, even arbitrary rules, for their property under their control. You are there as a guest, or patron, and they can refuse service and attach conditions on you being there. From reading here, apparently many ranges do not allow you to draw and fire from a holster (never seen that locally). You have a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, and I would argue to practice with those arms for self defense. None-the-less, if you don't like the range's rules, they aren't violating your constitutional rights because you are there voluntarily. Go find another range.

The above is definitely true with privately owned ranges open to the public. I'm not so sure about ranges on public lands. That would pose an interesting legal question, but one very unlikely to ever be brought to court.

[briandg]

metal god, did you throw your cell phone away?

Discarded material such as fired brass is not the same as dropping a twenty at the store. The owner of the property or his representative can claim the brass as your firearm throws it off, and you know that this happens.

This isn't a constitutional matter. It's a matter of whether or not you can throw what is considered trash onto a property that you don't own and the owner of that property can lay claim to that property.

As such, it is an issue between gentlemen as to whether or not you are allowed to retrieve and keep your five or ten dollars worth of brass that gets tossed.

[Unclenick]

Brian,

One man's trash is another man's treasure. I don't think an automatic assertion that it is trash is justified, but if it is, then you have a violation of littering laws involved in tossing it around on public land.


Metal God,

It's an interesting question. For a range with target runners (so nobody has to go downrange to change targets) it is easy to make a safety argument about brass that falls forward of the firing line becoming "lost" to the shooter. But for the state to constitutionally say you cannot pick up any of your own brass, not even behind the firing line, would, I think, require a statute saying that ejection from a firearm is a special act of abandoning, as you aren't specifically ejecting the cases into a trash bin. On the other hand, someone who packs up and leaves his brass behind, even .22 rimfire brass, is technically littering, as I mentioned above. There might be an argument to be made that requiring you to abandon your brass is requiring you to violate state littering laws and that one department of government can't legally require you to violate the law. If they then insist you hand the brass over to them afterward, that becomes an issue of confiscation of property you clearly have not abandoned and that would be arguable.

Based on personal experience I think you'll find, in the end, there are any number of government rules involving minor costs that violate the constitution in principle but that continue to be enforced because it isn't worth anyone's time or money to sue government in court over it. I can think of several examples. When it comes to costs too small for someone to take to court, they just get away with it. Collecting fees, fines, and, in this case, another few dollar's worth of scrap from shooters all adds up over time, and for that reason government jealously guards its income sources, no matter how small. You have to decide how much cost and grief you are willing to deal with before you try to fight it.

[briandg]

One man's trash is another man's treasure. I don't think an automatic assertion that it is trash is justified, but if it is, then you have a violation of littering laws involved in tossing it around on public land.

I'm talking about this from strictly an ethical code. Seizure and search of trash cans during an investigation doesn't even require a warrant, once it hits the street. It's not really valid, IMO, to draw the fourth amendment into it. Search and seizure in person, home, etc, it's hard to link that to whether the saloon can seize the aluminum cans that you drank. I'm not well versed in constitutional or other law.

Lots of businesses have the policy that brass that hits the ground is claimed as their property, and so far, I haven't seen it challenged legally, or won. I know that lots of ranges where tournaments are held claim dropped brass as well. scraping up the brass or mining the backstops just doesn't go well at most ranges.

I don't like the idea of a business or government taking what was once private property, the brass, but I can't see that it is inherently a violation of any law. Until enough people gather together and file a class action lawsuit against the numerous private ranges, we are never going to know what the courts will say.

Yes, if this is in fact true that brass dropped at the government owned range becomes property of the owner of the range, it is akin to the five dollar fees for so many things from not only government entities but all sorts of businesses. It's unethical in many cases, but not illegal.

One of the first principles of mankind is "can I get away with it? Woo hoo, I'm going to do it!

then you have a violation of littering laws involved in tossing it around on public land.

That is actually spelled out on a great big sign at our state range. 'fired shotgun shells are litter. collect them and dispose of them along with all targets or other debris.' They will charge you if you walk off and leave them. They could do it with brass, the salvage value of it isn't important. Leaving it there is illegal, but taking it is illegal, quite a conundrum.

Based on personal experience I think you'll find, in the end, there are any number of government rules involving minor costs that violate the constitution in principle but that continue to be enforced because it isn't worth anyone's time or money to sue government in court over it.

The constitution is a few vague principles that are constantly being challenged, and when we get to tiny things like whether a city can legally feed traffic ticket fines into the block party fund instead of a more specific fund, neither the constitution nor the agencies that it is involved in will care. without some sense of urgency or importance, these tiny problems aren't given the time of day. But then something comes along like ATM fees that collect millions of dollars annually, and that gets attention

[kmw1954]

Let's define it this way then. A group of friends and I go to the city park to play baseball. I'm batting and hit a ball to the outfield and then throw my bat to the side to run to 1st base. Is that discarded bat now the property of the city? After all I did throw it and then run off!

[LE-28]

When I moved to North Carolina the first indoor range I bought a membership for saw me picking up my brass and the owner came running in there and started yelling at me.

We went back to the show room where I could hear and he said if the brass hits the floor it is his. I told him to refund my $200.00 yearly membership I just paid for and I would find somewhere else to shoot. I brought the brass in here and it will leave with me. He told me OK, Let's do this.
If you can pick up what you came in with if it's on the carpet, if it falls in front of the line then it has to stay there. I agreed.
It's funny how fast they change their mind when it is going to cost them.

Posted by me.

I did change ranges a few years later and I the range I'm at now caters to reloaders.

They told me I could take all my brass with me but only mine. My 9mms send my brass into the abyssal unknown so they watch me shoot 15 shots and pick up 15 9mms and leave the rest there and just smile.

They are fair with me and I am fair with them. I like this range.

[44 AMP]

You didn't make any attempt to retain it as you shot it, hence it was discarded onto government property.

Well, some people might try to make that argument, but its just barking STUPID!

Most of us would agree, and I am emphatic on this point, personally, my brass isn't "discarded" until I leave it on the range. And that doesn't mean when I leave the immediate firing line area to use the porta-potty, or get something from my car, or go three stations over to chat with a buddy. It means when I pack up my stuff, get in my car and leave the range. If I do that, and leave brass behind, THEN its yours...but not until.

I'm fine with a range saying I can't pick up brass other people have 'abandoned' but I'm not at all ok with the attempted theft of my property, simply because it landed on "their" ground.

They don't get to commandeer my car, because I 'left" it in their parking lot, either...

[briandg]

Let's define it this way then. A group of friends and I go to the city park to play baseball. I'm batting and hit a ball to the outfield and then throw my bat to the side to run to 1st base. Is that discarded bat now the property of the city? After all I did throw it and then run off!

This is too ridiculous to bother with.

[5whiskey]

I don't like the idea of a business or government taking what was once private property, the brass, but I can't see that it is inherently a violation of any law.

I can tell you a private business taking your brass (your property) as a condition of using their property as a range will not be any violation of law, especially constitutional as the constitution places restraints on government and not business. Government, on the other hand, keeping your brass on public lands? It could be seen as an unreasonable seizure, maybe, but still could be found reasonable as a conditional use of the facility.

As has been said, I highly doubt we would ever see any jurisprudence on this because of two things. I can't see a judge entertaining such a trivial matter, and this...

Based on personal experience I think you'll find, in the end, there are any number of government rules involving minor costs that violate the constitution in principle but that continue to be enforced because it isn't worth anyone's time or money to sue government in court over it.

[k4swb]

My club demands you pick up your brass and any other brass laying around. If you want it, keep it. If not, throw it in a bucket provided for it.

Good system. Keeps things tidy.

I'll admit tho that it seems no one picks up the rimfire brass.

We have separate ranges for CF handgun, CF rifle, rimfire and shotguns and they better not mix.

[44 AMP]

lets keep it on topic and keep personal issues with authority, private.