> with the obvious exception that you should not put anything with the intention of hurting people, for example trap
what if it's bear country and someone puts out bear traps and says they're for bears when really they were meant for people? it's a good alibi so how would you defend against that?
The grandparent is describing someone with murderous motive. That isn't a cultural difference. There are murderers in Finland, lol.
A bear trap "for hunting" on your property would be a very bad alibi as booby trapping your property is extremely illegal in the US regardless as to intent. If you set something up on your property that harms someone, intentionally or otherwise, whether they are legally allowed to be on your property or not in the US, you are liable for whatever happens to them up to and including homicide (intentional or otherwise) charges.
Bear traps are an archaic hunting tool for bears, also, and their use in actual bear hunting is not common anymore.
So please, keep your condemnations about Americans "actively seeking ways to injure wildlife and people" to yourself when you are responding to a ridiculous, contrived, and uninformed scenario with your own cultural superiority narrative.
> set something up on your property that harms someone, intentionally or otherwise, whether they are legally allowed to be on your property or not in the US, you are liable for whatever happens to them up to and including homicide
I know this wasn't your intended point, but this principle in American law does make it basically impossible for any kind of "right to roam [on private property]" to exist here, and creates a strong incentive for property owners to actively restrict/prevent access. I always thought it was stupid that a burglar can sue me if they break into my collapsing shed in the woods on my marked private property, and get hurt because the shed falls down on their head.
To be fair, the threat of lawsuit from situations like this is effectively nill. I think people hold up the idea of this kind of lawsuit as an excuse to do the thing they wanted to do in the first place.
You've probably heard of the story of the burglar who fell down the stairs while robbing someone's home and successfully sued them for the medical bills. What you won't find is the case number because it never happened.
For any such case to not be laughed out of the courts the plaintiff would need to show malicious intent on your part. Avoid setting man traps or actually shooting people and the legal liability is completely within reason.
Because of this one story, people pretend that any change to the contrary is basically impossible in perpetuity in the future, because "precedent exists".
I suppose there is some shred of truth in there, but it seems like a defeatist attitude and a convenient excuse to do nothing even when the status quo is bad. (not all precedents are good)
The burglar case of course is silly, but there are plenty of personal injury cases for things like slip & fall on private property, a reckless driver damaging a parked car, etc. where a reasonable person might think "that's bullshit, the property owner shouldn't be responsible" but they end up having to settle.
The problem is a discrepancy between the law as written and the law as practiced. It results in inconsistent law.
What you often see is "Someone could sue you for X, so you better not do it." This is technically true, but what they should say is "Someone could sue you for X, but they would lose".
In the US you can sue anybody you want for anything under the sun. Saying "someone could sue you for that" is always true. There is a huge gulf between bringing a lawsuit and actually winning said lawsuit.
You also see disingenuous case citations to try to support an otherwise unsupportable point. "20 years ago a trespasser successfully sued the homeowner for injuries sustained on the property." Not mentioned in that previous blurb: "The trespasser was injured when the homeowner shot him with a shotgun without warning."
Unfortunately many American legislators and courts seem to go out of their way to promote this narrative by passing and enforcing laws that permit excessive use of violence by landowners and homeowners.
It's not really a good alibi; someone putting bear traps on a human path is going to have a very hard time arguing they were trying to catch bears. Someone putting out bear traps without signage is clearly doing something funky; would you put bear traps out in the woods and then try to collect them without signage?
More generally, many states ban the use of steel leg traps by civilians already. They're dangerous to humans (often including the owner), they're cruel to the animal, it lacks any of the "sport" attributed to normal hunting, and they can't differentiate between a bear and an endangered kind of deer or whatever.
They're gonna get weird looks, though. I've spent some time in bear country and I don't think I've heard of anyone trapping them; I don't even think the wildlife service around there does it. They generally prefer to shoot or tranquilize them if need be, because trapped bears are pissed off and you do not want to be in eyesight of a pissed off bear. I wouldn't take any bets about what a pissed off bear is capable of, especially in the ability of a trap to immobilize it.
Hunting is highly regulated these days. For one, I'm not aware of anywhere that allows the trapping of bear anymore. If you're trapping, you can't just put out traps and leave them. Most places require you to check them every 24 hours.
EDIT: apparently, Maine is the one state that allows trapping bears
what if it's bear country and someone puts out bear traps and says they're for bears when really they were meant for people? it's a good alibi so how would you defend against that?