I am not suggesting taking away 2nd amendment rights. This post has nothing to do with that.

Currently, in the U.S. anyone can go out onto National Forest or BLM land and target practice. Those lands are also used by campers, hikers, OHV riders, etc.

The target practice areas are everywhere. At nearly every single pullout in a forest you can find shell casings, trash that was used to shoot at, and even easy to spot shotgun shell hulls. Occasionally, I found live rounds as well.

If you are camping it’s almost impossible to find a spot where you don’t hear constant gunfire. So, noise pollution is everywhere.

If you browse some of the websites/apps dedicated to finding free camping spots you will sometimes see reviews where people say that the target practice folk were not careful with which direction they were shooting and that bullets were coming close to the trails or camping locations. You can imagine this to be true when you see how nearly every pullout has signs of previous shooting.

I have been in numerous National Forests: including: Vermont, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Florida, Georgia, South Dakota, Colorado, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington…you get the picture. I have been to a lot of forests and BLM land and every one of them sounds like militias are there preparing for the next war. And every one has target practice trash.

In my opinion, Oregon is the worst state for gunfire noise pollution and target practice trash and shell casings everywhere. I never found a single camping space in Oregon where I could not hear people shooting in the background.

So, all I am suggesting is that you take some acres in a corner somewhere in every forest and make a gun range. This would keep the noise and trash in one place and would also allow the forest rangers and BLM to police the areas and enforce rules and safety.