The gun lobbyists and Second Amendment activists are quite strong here. And as one of my friends once pointed out, "dinner is always in season."
*sigh*
To be fair, I no longer violently object to deer hunting the way I used to. There are more deer in the US now than there were at the beginning of 1900 because they have no real predators and are effective fringe dwellers, happily moving into the suburbs and people's backyards. They are major vectors for Lyme disease and a huge cause of fatal car accidents.
What I mind is how during rifle season, any idiot with a gun can pick up a six pack and a case of shells, park themselves in the woods and take shots at anything that moves. An unimpeded bullet from a deer rifle can travel over a mile--and so the casual hunter, out for his one day a year of hunting, may be a little more prone to shoot at targets they can't actually see.
Not to mention the ugly belligerence I've run into. At one boarding farm where we kept the horses, the hunters were cutting the wire fences so they could cross the fields at night, and when the management posted new No Trespassing signs, they killed a deer and hung it on the fence as a warning. Nice, eh?
That's why I hustled H back to the car and pretended I didn't see the hunter. :-(
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 26 Nov 2012 01:54 pm (UTC)*sigh*
To be fair, I no longer violently object to deer hunting the way I used to. There are more deer in the US now than there were at the beginning of 1900 because they have no real predators and are effective fringe dwellers, happily moving into the suburbs and people's backyards. They are major vectors for Lyme disease and a huge cause of fatal car accidents.
What I mind is how during rifle season, any idiot with a gun can pick up a six pack and a case of shells, park themselves in the woods and take shots at anything that moves. An unimpeded bullet from a deer rifle can travel over a mile--and so the casual hunter, out for his one day a year of hunting, may be a little more prone to shoot at targets they can't actually see.
Not to mention the ugly belligerence I've run into. At one boarding farm where we kept the horses, the hunters were cutting the wire fences so they could cross the fields at night, and when the management posted new No Trespassing signs, they killed a deer and hung it on the fence as a warning. Nice, eh?
That's why I hustled H back to the car and pretended I didn't see the hunter. :-(