Definition
Shooting at random refers to the discharge of a firearm without deliberate aim at a specific, identified target — firing indiscriminately into an area, crowd, or open space in a manner that creates generalized danger to persons or property. The offense is characterized by the absence of directed intent toward a particular victim and the reckless or wanton nature of the discharge itself.
The phrase captures a mode of conduct rather than a specific harm: it is the untargeted, scattering quality of the shooting that defines the act. A person who fires into a crowd without aiming at any individual, discharges a weapon into a building without regard to who may be inside, or fires blindly into a public space has shot at random regardless of whether anyone is struck.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "At random" means without definite aim, purpose, method, or adherence to a prior arrangement; haphazardly.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Random" — a rapid, headlong course; hence, want of direction, rule, or method; hazard; chance — used chiefly in the phrase "at random," that is, without a settled point of direction; at hazard.
The common meaning tracks reasonably well with the legal one, but the legal definition adds a structural requirement the ordinary phrase does not carry: it is not merely careless or unplanned shooting, but specifically shooting untargeted at persons or places in a way that exposes an undefined class of potential victims to danger. Deliberate aim at a specific target — even an unlawful one — takes the act outside the definition. The legal term is less about the shooter's mental state of randomness and more about the objective, untargeted character of the act.
Common Confusion
The most important boundary question is between shooting at random and a directed, intentional shot at a particular target. Bouvier's dictionary makes this explicit: one who intentionally shot a dog was held not guilty of shooting at random. The intentionality and specificity of the target — however unlawful the act — removes it from the random category. Researchers should not conflate this offense with assault with a deadly weapon or reckless discharge of a firearm, which may cover directed but unlawful shots. Shooting at random is the residual category for the truly untargeted discharge.
Why It Matters in Research
This term appears infrequently as a standalone charge in modern codified criminal law, which means researchers relying only on current statutes may miss it entirely. It surfaces more often in older case law, municipal ordinances, and state-level disorderly conduct or public safety statutes, sometimes embedded in phrases like "shooting at random or into crowds" or "discharge of a firearm in a public place." The Bouvier citation to 50 S.W. 843 places the term in late nineteenth-century southwestern American jurisprudence, and the term is most likely to appear in corpus sources covering that period.
The key research trap is assuming the term implies strict accidentality or absence of any intent. Courts have consistently treated the "at random" element as targeting the untargeted nature of the act — the absence of a specific victim — not the absence of intent to fire. A shooter may fully intend to discharge the weapon and still be guilty of shooting at random if no specific person or target was aimed at. This distinction between general recklessness and targeted intent has direct bearing on how the offense relates to specific-intent crimes in the same historical corpus.
Researchers should also watch for jurisdictional variation in whether this appears as an independent offense, an aggravating circumstance (as in gang-related drive-by shooting statutes), or as descriptive language in jury instructions and indictments rather than a formal charge name.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary is sparse on this entry, offering only a single illustrative proposition drawn from case law: that intentional shooting of a dog does not constitute shooting at random. This negative definition is nonetheless analytically useful — it tells the researcher that the concept requires the absence of a specific, identified target and that directed intentional acts, even when wrongful, fall outside the term's scope.
Bouvier does not attempt a comprehensive positive definition, which reflects the reality that "shooting at random" functioned more as descriptive shorthand in charges and ordinances than as a term of art with a formally elaborated doctrinal structure. What the historical dictionaries miss: any treatment of the gradations between truly random fire and semi-directed fire (as where a shooter fires generally toward a group), or any engagement with how the term maps onto criminal mental states such as recklessness versus willfulness.
Jurisdictional Note
Some states codify the conduct under reckless discharge or unlawful discharge of a firearm statutes without using the phrase "at random." Others, particularly in older municipal and state codes, retain language tracking the common-law phrase directly. Researchers working across jurisdictions should search both the term itself and its functional equivalents in statutory indexes.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See Law Mind Encyclopedia: Reckless Endangerment; Disorderly Conduct; Assault with a Deadly Weapon.