So Congress finally passes a gun control bill. Shortly thereafter the president who supported it goes hunting.
In a sane world, this would be unremarkable. There is no logical reason why someone shouldn’t favor strong gun control laws and also enjoy spending a day outdoors shooting ducks or deer.
But this is not a sane world. This is the United States of America, circa the waning years of the 20th Century, in which simple-mindedness rules.
Here’s how it works: The National Rifle Association is made up of people who (a)hunt and (b)oppose gun control. Most animal welfare organizations are made up of people who (a)disapprove of hunting and (b)support gun control.
Ergo, everyone is either pro-hunting and anti-gun control or vice versa.
So it is that the shrieking-heads debate programs on radio and television feature one person from the NRA shouting “every American has a God-given right to carry an arsenal” and another from an animal-lovers group wailing “oh, poor little Bambi.” The news stories quote the same two types, if not the same two people, thereby providing balanced simple-mindedness.
But it’s worse than simple-mindedness. It’s demonstrable error, as proven by these incontrovertible facts:
– No one has the right to own a gun.
More Top Picks Smart Tvs
– Hunting is beneficial for both people and animals.
The non-existence of a “right to bear arms” is fact, not opinion. Opinion might hold that people OUGHT to have this right, or even that every law-abiding citizen should pack a rod at all times. Considering the risk of walking around some cities, or riding some commuter trains, this opinion cannot blithely be dismissed as irrational.
But as Jack Miller could attest if he’s still around, no one now has such a right. Miller was the guy who carried a shotgun from Oklahoma to Arizona in violation of the National Firearms Act. He challenged the law, citing the 2nd Amendment and its “right to bear arms.” Rejecting his argument, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1939 (U.S. vs. Miller) that he had demonstrated no “reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-regulated militia.”
Nothing the supremes have done since has altered that ruling, which said that the 2nd Amendment protects only a state’s right to maintain a militia. The individual’s freedom to have a gun can be limited, even abolished, as in the Village of Morton Grove. The NRA may contend that the Supreme Court is wrong. But by definition the Supreme Court is never wrong until it reverses itself, which in this case it won’t.
An anti-hunting opinion is also valid, but those of us who do not shoot animals would be honest if we acknowledged our debt to those who do. Now that laws protect them from their own worst impulses, they provide the valuable service of controlling wildlife populations, especially in the case of deer, which are excessively abundant.
And unpleasant. Bambi to the contrary, deer are not cute little things with personalities, like puppies or kittens. They’re wild animals, covered with bugs and parasites, graceful but not very smart. A person would not have a relationship with a deer “any more than you would with a field mouse,” said Paul Shelton, the Forest Wildlife program manager of the Illinois Conservation Department’s Wildlife Division.
What a wonderful animal to shoot. It’s big enough, beautiful enough and fast enough to provide great satisfaction to the successful hunter. Its meat is tasty and healthful. A deer which has been shot will not starve or become sick, infecting the rest of its herd. Nor will it tramp through someone’s garden, lawn or windshield. Glimpsed in the woods, deer are a treat. In the neighborhood, they’re a pest.
Had mankind never proliferated on the continent, natural predators would control the deer population. But it is less likely that wolves will return to suburban Pittsburgh and Chicago than that the Supreme Court will reverse “Miller.”
Anti-hunting crusaders do not love animals as much as they hate hunters. It’s a stylistic dissonance, with no small dollop of class prejudice. Though a real a hunter is as likely to be a cultured gentleman (or lady) as a boor, their foes look on them as the kind of people who drink domestic beer. Out of the can. And they’re sometimes crude.
Hunting does imply the recognition that some crudeness, even savagery, resides in us all. Dealing with this primordial reality by hunting makes as much sense as group therapy or folk dancing.
What America needs is more hunters shooting more deer. Perhaps hunters with registered firearms. That may be an annoyance, but it isn’t unconstitutional.