From: sherw@ocf.berkeley.edu (Gregory Sherwin)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals
Subject: Re: Colorado Hunters under attack
Date: 5 Jan 1993 21:52:53 GMT
Organization: U.C. Berkeley Open Computing Facility
NNTP-Posting-Host: sandstorm.berkeley.edu

In article <viking.726218466@vincent1.iastate.edu> viking@iastate.edu (Dan Sorenson) writes:
>	We still don't use AK-47's for hunting, and again your ignorance

Joke was intended here - perhaps I forgot to add the smiley faces for some
folks.

>>Humans evolved, society has evolved, and some things that people claim as
>> "heritage" are no more culturally relevant than say the senseless killing
>>of young black men in our inner cities over drugs is a modern day claim to
>>"heritage".
>
>However, my heritage
>involved burning large tracts of English and Irish villages and enslaving

There is a "hunting heritage", but rather that this heritage from the standpoint
of hunting being a recreational (vs. survival) activity deserves preservation
no more than burning large tracts of English and Irish villages and enslaving
those who lived there, in addition to being a philosophical
fallacy.

>>tomorrow?".  It was once a means of personal sustenaince, but now is
>>just an outdated remnant of our societal past like legal slavery or serfdom.
>
>	On the contrary, a far greater number carry their weapons for
>personal protection, and hunting has not lost any relevance to human
>survival.  Be it Sgt. York in World War II or Bernie Goetz, survival
>is enhanced with hunting skills, and furthermore one would do well to
>realize that owning firearms is not a right because of hunting, but that
>it is a right because the purpose of the 2nd amendment is to ensure a
>militia that is well-armed to provide a deterrent to tyrrany and to, as
>a last resort, overthrow a corrupt or tyrannical government.  You can
>try to ban hunting and say that we have advanced beyond that sort of
>thing, but so long as you think of hunting only as a "sport" similar to
>bowling you conveniently ignore the most basic reasons for hunting and
>firearm ownership and usage being a right.

Hold on a minute folks - how did we get from hunting to the 2nd amendment
all of a sudden!?  I think you are reaching here.  If you feel that
hunting as a sport equates to target practice for would be assailants, then I
think that is preposterous.  The 2nd amendment does not provide a right
to hunting, period.  It's about guns.  You can hunt without guns, you
can have a gun without hunting.  They are not inseparable.  I may believe
in forms of gun control that restrict easy access to them for people
wishing to do hasty irrational or criminal acts, but I never said I didn't
support the 2nd amendment.  On the one hand, I think there are a lot of
scary idiots who run around with guns in this country, but even worse there
is a government that is also worthy of great suspicion considering its
potential for corruption, etc.  So I am for gun ownership.  I just don't
see that a right to bear arms and the insurance of a militia equates
to the ethical right to kill animals for the fun of it.
I think you are sadly mistaken, and that you are making a ridiculous
assumption in linking the shooting of animals for pleasure with self-defense.
Perhaps if this country is one day overrun by a tyrannical electorate of
black-tailed deer, I will think differently.
>
>	Perhaps a quick skimming of talk.politics.guns, or the archives
>relevant to that group, might provide some insight on these other
>reasons for hunting, shooting, and owning weapons.  To be quite honest,
>I feel you've overly-simplified the reasons and justifications.
>

Again - you are confusing guns with hunting.  There is a distinct
difference to which you seem blind to.

greg
Newsgroups: talk.politics.animals