When you are at home, how often do you hear gunshots?

Occasionally, from the next neighborhood over, which is not the best. I always wonder what went on, but seldom find out. It doesn’t make the papers.

Never hear gunshots. I live in a very civilized, residential part of town.

I would hate to hear guns going off randomly. Ugh.

Never. There have been a couple of occasions when a neighbor’s motorcycle has made a loud noise or the one time when I called the police about a domestic disturbance, but that’s it. A housemate owned a pistol, and he would take it out to a firing range. And I live in a gun-happy area.

Never, unless the neighbours happen to have their telly’s on loud.

There are no guns around here to go off, so never.

I have some neighbors (that means we have 20 acres of separation) who claim that they are shooting at targets all the time. That is shorthand for poaching and shooting deer, turkeys, game birds and who knows what else out of season and even during the season, during illegal hours.

I hear the boom booms of…what…shotguns?... from their direction regularly.

Never. The city wouldn’t go for it. Gunshots here would most likely work out to home defense or a misfire.
@gailcalled Probably .30–06, but I’d have to hear for myself. “All the time” would leave them with more animal carcasses than they’d know what to do with, so at least some of that is probably really target practice.

Where I live now probably a few times a month. I hear them more in the winter when the leaves have fallen and everything is dead or flown south. There is a gun range somwhere not too far from me, I don’t know where it is, so sometimes it might be that, and sometimes it might be a resident firing a gun. I live in a ruralish suburb. Some of the developments have a lot of houses on ¼–1 acre lots, but there are large areas of woods, and some lots of 3 acres and much larger. I back up to a section of woods, maybe 30 acres, and beyond the woods are 5–10 acre lots. In front of my house a standard suburban looking subdivdion with ¼–½ acre lots. There are a lot of deer in our woods, I don’t know the law for how much distance from a residential house someone can shoot a deer, but probably some people around me do hunt on their property.

Previous to living here I never heard gun shots ever where I lived.

@Nullo: Good point. There is here, interestingly, a small underground community that is cash-poor who count on hunting for much of their protein.

I guess that you can dress and freeze only so many deer per season?

I occasionally have friends come over so they can try out a new purchase. I have a backstop made of logs that is at least 3 feet thick. . Other neighbors have similar setups. Remember, this is not the city. We have lots of space and it’s perfectly legal to discharge firearms as long as you are more than 500 feet from a building.

I actually enjoy the sound of shots and chainsaws in the distance. It means “country” to me.
There is one noise that does bother me. Because it is so quiet here you can hear for miles. I timed a guy on a noisy motorcycle for a full 4 minutes in the direction of the highway about a mile away. He was louder than gunshots. Why isn’t he deaf?

@gailcalled Actually some handguns make tremendous noise. You neighbors really could be just shooting at targets.

@gailcalled: As I said, there is a lot of land, mostly second growth deciduous forest, between me and them. Thereare also a huge number of guys who drive pick-ups with gun racks (with guns…shot guns, rifles..) on them

@Nullo: Although I seem to be talking to myself, that remark ^^^ is meant for you.

Never. I live in a civilised country. Sometimes someone detonates some fireworks, though.

@ragingloli Hey, we need our guns to protect us from strange furriners and wild Injuns. ;-)
I love the sound of fireworks although, theoretically they are not allowed. (Nobody ever complains.)
Isn’t it bizarre that shooting guns and walking around the neighborhood at night with a loaded firearm while hunting varmints is legal, but setting off a firecracker isn’t?

Where I live, in a pretty nice suburb, never. When I house sit for my friend, who lives about 30 miles away, in a lovely condo complex surrounded by a slightly older, more dingy part of town, I usually hear gunshots at least every other time I stay there. That and police helicopters flying overhead. It sucks.

All the time, I too live rural and most people have guns out here in the hills/mountains. We all live on 5 to 100’s of acres of property and rifles are abundant.
The last gunshots I heard were right on my front deck when I called my neighbor down last week to shoot two monster rattlesnakes, one right under my bottom deck step, the other threatening my cat in the creek bed 20 feet below my deck.

Tis the season for snakes and this heat wave is bringing them out in droves this summer.
I do not like killing things, but, after my cat was bitten 6 weeks ago and cost me almost a grand to save him, well….bye bye rattlesnakes, if you can’t stay out in the woods, you’re dead.

I have moved back to this part of town that I lived in when I was 10 – 17. There are no gunshots now, but when the military base was active, you heard them all the time – especially when we lived in a house near the firing range. It was hilarious when guests came to visit and they’d jump out of their skin because it sounded like war broke out in our back yard. We were totally used to it.

I don’t miss all the gunfire, but I do miss hearing taps every night and reverie in the morning.

Maybe once every couple of weeks. I live in a rural area, so it’s not that unusual. During deer and turkey season the number of shots we hear increases.

I’ve never heard a gunshot from my house. I don’t think that I’ve ever even heard a gunshot outside of TV/movies, to be honest.

@tedibear Yes, same here, deer and turkey season coming up!

Never (Canadian)

I doubt that I hear any from my house. The occasional pop, pop I hear is probably firecrackers.

There are police actions near my son’s house nearly every day.

On opening day of waterfowl season for the first half hour or so there are hundreds of shots. Boom bada boom bada boom boom boom! Scores of hunters in their blinds on the water waiting for the exact legal moment, ½ hour before sunrise, to let fly. It is spectacular. I love the sound.

None of the shots are fired in anger.

@LuckyGuy Shhhh…Marwyn is watching! Aaaah, poor little duckies and goosies!

@Coloma Sorry about that. Next time i will spell out my response so Marwyn doesn’t understand.

@LuckyGuy Marwyn expects a crate of romaine and a dozen loaves of 12 grain bread, with sunflower and flax seed for your insensitivity.
He’ll be waiting for the UPS guy next week, hop to it!. lol

A few times a year. Usually at night. Occasionally followed by police sirens.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell if they are gun shots or fire crackers of some sort. If it is July 4th or New Year’s Eve, it is likely to be fire crackers. But once I came back after Christmas break to find my window with a bullet hole in it and a bullet on my floor (along with a lot of glass). My best guess is it was a New Year’s Eve celebrator, shooting from the roof of a housing authority building that has since been torn down.

None here, but lots in Wichita where I used to live.

Funny…I was at a tiny little school in a tiny rural town one day. I was out on the playground and I distinctly heard several gun shots over yonder. I thought, “OMG! We gotta get these kids in side!” But nobody batted an eye. So I asked one of the students about it. She said, “Oh, they’re just hunting over by the river there.”

@LuckyGuy ”...camo and face paint..” , to hunt ”..ducks..”.
Just how tricky are ducks?
They (ducks) seem quite relaxed and accessible over here.

I live very close to a military base, I hear gun shots quite a lot in this town! It doesn’t bother me.

@lloydbird Waterfowl hunters go full on camo – even their guns . If you go to the Cabella’s site and click on hunting supplies you will see it.

Later in the year we have bow hunters looking for deer and turkey. They, too, dress in full camo and carry elaborate compound bows that are similarly camo’d.

@Dutchess_III That’s how it is here. You only need to be 500 feet from the school property. Nobody gets excited . Like I said, the guns are never fired in anger.

During the first hour of the opening of deer season, it sound like the invasion of Normandy here.

@gailcalled How do you feel about the sound?

As long as everyone is careful, I am fine. The problem is finding empty 6 packs,Twinkie wrappers and crumpled cigarette boxes lying by the side of the road at 7:00 AM

I allowed hunters on my land for years until I discovered that that they were using salt licks illegally. My neighbor turned them in. The local police got involved and I fired my hunters but did worry about some kind of retribution.

@gailcalled The law varies from state to state, but there are also practical limitations like time and storage space. A big deer produces a lot of venison, and your neighbors are probably supplementing with fruits and veggies. In Missouri, it is legal to shoot a wild hog year round, no permit necessary, though they would much rather you call the Conservation Dept. and let them do it. They recently introduced some lesser limitations to keep people from shooting hogs and “accidentally” killing an “extra” deer. This may be the case where you are, as well. Your state government probably has a website with the information.
I’ve seen your pictures of Milo, and have got to say that you live in a really nice set of woods.

@LuckyGuy Fireworks pose a fire hazard, whereas firearms do not.
@Coloma Have you considered getting yourself a snake gun? A .22 or so ought to do the trick, and would certainly cost less than a grand.

@Nullo Not really, I have a great neighbor that just loves to come a’ shootin’ for me when the need arises. I have been instructed to call him any time of day or night if need be.
I wouldn’t want to deprive him of the thrill and the tales of his great rattlesnake wrangling.
Yes, he used a .22 rifle to kill the vipers last week.

@Coloma Very thoughtful of you. :D

Or just a stick with a fork at the end, then you pin them down at the head with it and pick them up. Much cheaper.

@Nullo He LOVES it, killing those 2 rattlers made his day, he got to tell all the guys at work about his big white hunter moment! He is STILL talking about it 12 days later and I bet the snakes just keep getting bigger and bigger, they are probably 5 feet long by now. lolol

@ragingloli Fuck that! lol