Mo's news thread
for me to talk about srs stuff.
Interesting Al-Jazeera America article about the disconnect between the NRA and hunters, a group they claim to represent.
Interesting Al-Jazeera America article about the disconnect between the NRA and hunters, a group they claim to represent.
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
but since that is rather impractical in the short term, I am glad to see that most people--even other gun owners--think gun fetishists are crazy.
it does say a lot though that what's actually quite a small minority of the country has such a disproportionate say in policy in what is ostensibly a democratic country.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to have guns, even if you don't believe defending your home is among them.
I should point out I don't really consider hunting OK either. Though I don't think it's controversial to say that hunting for sustenance is less outrageously stupid than hunting for sport.
I don't agree that hunting for sport is 'outrageously stupid', either. I wouldn't personally enjoy it, but it's beneficial to conservation if done sustainably.
I'm not an expert on the subject of conservation, but I sincerely doubt there are enough sports hunters in the United States to make a significant dent in any non-endangered animal's population.
In the UK, at least, large areas of the countryside are preserved and managed for the purpose of sport hunting, so I feel it plays an important role in keeping our woodland from being swallowed up by fields and urban sprawl.
I am not sure what significant threat foxes and coyotes pose to anyone who is not a farmer. Even then, I am sure there are ways of dealing with them that both do not require guns and are more effective.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Fox hunting is horrendous and I do not support it in the slightest, but there are less cruel methods of hunting.
I would like it that, if a person living in the United States wished to go their entire lives without ever seeing a gun in person, they could do so.
What I am getting at I suppose is that I want gun culture to die an ironically violent death so that we can move on to talking about these things rationally as a country instead of any attempt at regulation being met with violent "BUT WE NEED TO PROTECT OUR FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS OR ELSE THE GOVERNMENT WILL COME AND STEAL MUH GUNS I'M HOARDING TO FIGHT OFF THE GOVERNMENT". That kind of culture is everywhere up here, and it's awful. I knew people in high school who legitimately thought that it was perfectly legal to assassinate a political leader under the first amendment.
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Anyway
the idea that the second amendment exists to protect the gun rights of civilians is a myth in of itself. It related to continental state armies originally, if I remember correctly.
Re: sport hunting, the type of hunting most important for the purpose of UK conservation is pheasant hunting (grouse in Scotland), for food, sport, or both. Pheasants require woodland environments, and so the native British woodland is preserved. This is vitally important for wildlife, since farmland cannot sustain wild plants and animals; a square acre of managed farmland supports less wildlife than a square acre of London. A pheasant living in the wild lives a happier, healthier life than a domesticated chicken, even a free-range chicken. A similar case can be made for the hunting of rabbits, which if left unchecked can be incredibly destructive in any case.
Shooting is usually a quick death, and causes no more suffering than predation in the wild, unlike 'sports' such as fox-hunting, badger-baiting, bullfighting, dogfighting and cockfighting. The subjection of animals to prolonged suffering for entertainment is monstrous, and should always be illegal. I didn't mean to give the impression I supported it.
Also, liberal types tend not to be heavily armed anyway, for obvious reasons.
Though at the same time, I can't help but wonder how many hunt for sport vs. sustenance in this scenario. Possibly both.
On that note, worth noting that deer have no natural predators in the UK besides human beings, so if nobody hunted them they'd quickly get out of control.
Of course, this is our fault for wiping out the wolves, but the current British environment wouldn't sustain them since there's not enough wilderness anymore (there is a guy in Scotland who wants to reintroduce them, but there are practical and legal reasons why this hasn't happened so far).
It's a powerful gesture symbolically, but I worry for the man's safety. The Mafia are big on pseudo-Catholic mysticism and I can't imagine this'll sit well.