Certainly if you caused someone harm using one it would be illegal in the sense that causing someone harm is illegal anyway, but a harmless trap like this one doesn't seem to me that it would be illegal. I'm not a lawyer though, so I'd be interested to see if there is some law I'm not aware of.
I'm really disappointed in the quality of the replies to this. I would hope that HN would be just a little more fact based, instead of having people willing to argue over trivially falsifiable claims.
The fact is, booby traps which cause bodily injury (including paintball, very easily, without protective equipment) are definitively illegal in most jurisdictions. This is the truth whether you spend 5 seconds or 5 hours googling.
Totally agree on all counts. No question that any kind of booby trap that is designed to cause injury (and probably even that isn't designed to do so but does anyway) would be illegal.
Which Geneva Convention applies to non-state actors not acting in the context of international or internal war? Please quote specifically the relevant provisions making it applicable to that case.
> It's also a five second Google search
Well, yes, that that's all the effort you devoted does explain the rather giant hole in your argument.
Is the full statement. Individual state laws vary but it's important enough to be international law was the point.
From the article:
>If a person sets up such a trap to protect his/her property, he/she will be liable for any injury or death even to an unwanted intruder such as a burglar. It is illegal to set a booby trap on one's own property to prevent intruders.
And that statement is wrong, AFAICT; the Geneva Conventions do not address the conduct at issue here, whether “for starters” or otherwise.
They might prohibit somewhat analogous conduct in a very disanalogous context [0] but context and conduct are not orthogonal considerations in law.
[0] or, maybe not; the specific instrument you are probably thinking of is Amended Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons; it does address booby-traps, but the device at issue here is not a booby-trap as defined in that protocol (not designed to kill or injure).
