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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'Right to Hunt' Amendments Pit Gun Rights vs. Animal Welfare (Governing.com)
With backing by the NRA, making hunting a constitutionally protected right has become increasingly popular in the past decade. The latest battlegrounds are Alabama and Mississippi.by Chris Kardish | September 19, 2014
If enough Mississippi voters think its a good idea support hunting and fishing, theyll join 17 other states in ensuring constitutional protections for the practices.
So-called Right to Hunt and Fish amendments have become increasingly popular in the past decade, as groups like the National Rifle Association have led yearly pushes in states they consider friendly terrain. Their objective: to head off future regulation against hunting and also establish it as the preferred means of wildlife population control, as opposed to special forms of contraception and other methods of thinning out herds.
In Alabama, which already has a hunting rights amendment, advocates want to make it even stronger through the ballot box in November. The amendment before voters would make hunting and fishing the preferred means of managing and controlling wildlife. Mississippis amendment would do that as well.
Both amendments would be subject to reasonable regulations that promote wildlife conservation, but animal welfare groups, such as the Humane Society of the United States, generally oppose constitutional protections for hunting for a number of reasons. They often deride the measures as policies that don't respond to any particular threat but merely will make it difficult to regulate more controversial practices down the road.
It could prevent really progressive reform that would be necessary if there were really egregious abuse, certain forms of trapping like the kind were trying to fight against in Maine, said Tracy Coppola, the director of the Humane Societys Wildlife Abuse Campaign.
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more: http://www.governing.com/topics/elections/gov-hunting-ballot-measures-alabama-mississippi.html
MODS: This straddles topics, including both animal rights and gun rights. Hope it can be posted outside the Gungeon.
randys1
(16,286 posts)Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)Wild boar are an invasive species that is hurting a lot of native species. Hunting them is at least attempting to keep them in check.
randys1
(16,286 posts)and die in pure agony and hell, right?
Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)Do you think buying a pig from a factory farm is an improvement?
randys1
(16,286 posts)hack89
(39,171 posts)NickB79
(19,113 posts)Response to NickB79 (Reply #17)
scarystuffyo This message was self-deleted by its author.
lumberjack_jeff
(33,224 posts)How did nature do it before people?
cherokeeprogressive
(24,853 posts)NickB79
(19,113 posts)Even raised on smaller family farms, livestock is still subjected to pain and confinement that borders on cruelty. As a teen in the 90's, we pulled baby piglet's teeth out with pliers to let them nurse and fatten longer, castrated them with razorblades and no painkillers, caged sows for months when they gave birth, etc. And this is a standard practice by farmers to this day (though the confinement crates are being phased out, thankfully).
I'll take my free-range, antibiotic-free, wild-harvested meat, downed with a single shot, any day, thank you.
alarimer
(16,245 posts)The alternative is, in many cases, unacceptable as well.
Each ecosystem has a carrying capacity for a given species. Without humans, nature would take care of any overpopulation with disease and predation. In the absence of predators (we have sadly eliminated most of those), deer, for example, because stunted because there isn't enough food to go around. Plus diseases become a problem as well.
Hunting is one of the methods to manage these populations. It is done scientifically, not always perfectly, with limits set according to whatever formulas the managers have to be sustainable.
Did you know that an excise tax on hunting and fishing equipment and motor boat fuels goes to conservation programs? Most hunters and fishers that I know are more than willing to help out.
Sadly, they have attempted to institute a similar tax on other types of activities (binoculars, camping equipment) but those have always failed in Congress.
Please read a little about fish and wildlife management before you spout ignorant nonsense.
Shrike47
(6,913 posts)I understand killing animals to eat. That's not what we are talking about. This is killing for
Entertainment.
Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)RebelOne
(30,947 posts)Believe me, I know because I was a copy-editor 13 years for hunting and fishing magazines across the U.S. I also hated hunting and after reading and editing first-hand stories from hunters, I grew to really despise that so-called sport.
Go Vols
(5,902 posts)Could give a shit about having their pic taken with what they killed,let alone wanting it in a magazine.
I hunted for 30+ years and can never remember a pic being taken.
Jenoch
(7,720 posts)but what I was actually ohotographing was the long-tailed weasal that was eating the tallow from the hanging carcass.
Jenoch
(7,720 posts)Trophy game make up only a tiny percentage of wildlife that is harvested. What, do you think everybody is actually shooting 12-point bucks with a B&C score of over 190? The reason your perceptions are scewed is that your average doe or fork buck don't make it into the pages of outdoor magazines.
Interestingly enough, there is a 10 point buck roaming our suburban Twin Cities neighboorhood. We rarely see a buck loke that on our hunting land. They never come out of the deep woods and swamps during the daytime.
NickB79
(19,113 posts)Do you really expect anyone to believe the vast majority of deer shot in this country every fall are left to rot in the woods, with only their heads sawed off for a wall mount?
What you suggest is actually illegal in virtually every state (leaving a game animal to rot in the field), with hefty fines and revocation of your hunting license if caught by game wardens.
And having grown up in a rural area where many people hunt with hand-me-down guns to get cheap meat for the freezer, I can say that I've NEVER seen anyone who didn't eat what they killed. Even a big buck can be processed into venison sausage, steak, hamburger, etc.
GGJohn
(9,951 posts)you don't know.
The vast majority of animals harvested are NOT trophy animals, they're taken for food.
Can't imagine why they are trying to head off future opposition to hunting. I mean, nobody would ever vilify and denigrate hunting and attempt to legislate against it...
Psychopaths like to eat food. I like to eat food. The case is mounting against me, it seems.
scarystuffyo
(733 posts)scarystuffyo
(733 posts)petronius
(26,580 posts)the following to Article III of their Constitution:
It would follow right after:
Right to Bear Arms
The right of every citizen to keep and bear arms in defense of his home, person, or property, or in aid of the civil power when thereto legally summoned, shall not be called in question, but the legislature may regulate or forbid carrying concealed weapons.
http://ballotpedia.org/Article_III,_Mississippi_Constitution
At first glance I would support it, although I wonder what the background is for that statement about "traditional methods," as well as whether that "subject only to" limitation might be too strict (for instance, might there be laws about safety and access to public lands that might be unduly restricted by that clause)...
petronius
(26,580 posts)" a)
" b) This amendment shall be known as the "Sportsperson's Bill of Rights."
http://ballotpedia.org/Alabama_Right_to_Hunt_and_Fish,_Amendment_5_%282014%29
Jenoch
(7,720 posts)amendment guaranteeing the right hunt and fish in 1998. It passed with a yes vote of more than 77%. Initially, while still in committe, the amendment also would have guaranteed the right to trap fur bearing animals.
dilby
(2,273 posts)and into the voting booths. Does anyone really believe that people in Alabama or Mississippi are in any danger of losing their right to hunt or fish? Never going to happen but it does get the Republican voting block to show up on election day.
Jenoch
(7,720 posts)this issue was bi-partisan. It was more of a metro, non-metro division. There were some liberalTwin Cities Democrats against the amendment, but most Democratic legislators outside of the Twin Cities voted to out the amendment on the statewide ballot.
ileus
(15,396 posts)guns have never had rights either...