I was shooting in my yard the other day and out of nowhere my neighbor from almost a half mile away walks up my driveway and demands that I stop shooting until he can verify that I have an approved shooting facility. I put my gun down on the table, looked at him funny and told him to GFhimself. He started blabbering about having grandkids up and he had every right to come make aure I was being safe.
I said
A: i'm shooting the opposite direction from your property
B: my back stop is about a hundred tons of dirt pushed up
C: get the fugg off of my property, and if he doesn't like the way things are done in Northern Pa, he can get the hell out and go back to Jersey.
He started in about how it was illegal for me to shoot within 300 feet of buildings, and that he was an NRA instructor and what I was doing wasn't safe, and he was worried about his grandkids
. . . .
He needs to go back to Jersey. When they forst bought this house up here, his wife called the troopers because a farmer's cows were out of the pasture( in the farmer's field) and she was worried that they would maul her grandkids
I guess you might want to post your property "no trespassing." I don't know if that would avoid liability in case of accidents, but it can't hurt.
In one of the continuing legal education courses I took last year, the speaker told a hypothetical story about kids trespassing on private forest land to play cowboys and indians and one falling out of a tree. The owner could restrict his exposure to lawsuits to the value of the land by putting title in an "asset protection" trust.
That would shield his other property, like his business, medical practice equipment, house, antique car or gun collections, etc. One could even have multiple asset protection trusts.
For those who have even moderately significant belongings or items that they want to preserve for their families, this makes a lot of sense.
Done properly, the suing party would lose �� or have such obstacles that he would agree to a modest settlement. Remember, a settlement (even when it is a fairly large percent of the demand) is a win for the defendant, when compared with a big loss, especially one with punitive damages which could wipe him out. It is worth thinking about.
I bet you know that I am thinking about trusts myself.
