The whole of the US is approximately 3 1/2 million square miles per http://www.enchantedlearning.com/usa/states/area.shtml . The latest stats I can quickly find indicate that there are ~303,824,646 people living in the US per https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.ht
ml#Intro. This indicates an average of 86.8 people per square mile. If everyone were evenly spread, your 3.2 mile example could endanger any of up to approximately 2800 people.
Point a weapon in any direction and - per the above odds - you're likely to have a human within 200 yards in any (horizontal) direction you point.
Of course, population density is *not* evenly distributed, but this gives a general order of magnitude of the issues. *shrug* YMMV, 'course. |
