http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=73089&ntpid=0
Joel McNally: Let 8-year-olds lug their booster seats to the hunt
By Joel McNally
It would never occur to me on his birthday to say, 'Nicky, now that you're 8, we should go out into the woods with guns and find some real animals and blow them away.'Even for the gun-addled, NRA-groveling politicians in Madison, the proposed legislation to arm 8-year-old children with high-powered, deadly weapons is so absurd it takes your breath away.
The idiocy is compounded by the fact that these beginning hunters would not have to take any training. Currently, beginning hunters, who must be at least 12 years old under state law, are required to pass a hunter safety course. But the proposed law to lower the hunting age in Wisconsin from 12 to 8, which already has passed the Republican-led Assembly, would not require any gun safety training at all for 8-year-olds tottering through the woods with lethal weapons almost as big as they are.
"Let's get them out there and see if they're interested," says state Rep. Scott Gunderson, R-Waterford, the bill's sponsor. "If they are, they can go through hunter's safety when they turn 12." If they live to be 12, that is.
It hasn't been lost on the critics of this gun-crazed legislation that the state recently passed a law requiring 8-year-olds to ride in booster seats in automobiles for their safety. Now, perhaps these children could take their booster seats into the woods with them to prop up those big, heavy rifles so their little arms don't get so tired waiting to get a really good shot off.
AP Photo/Oshkosh Northwestern, Laura May
Bryon Klabunde of Hancock,Wis. brings the maturity of adulthood to hunting.
Do these legislators know any 8-year-olds? I do. My grandson is about to turn 8. He's a terrific kid, but I have never once considered buying him a deadly weapon for his birthday next month.
Like a lot of kids his age, Nicky really likes animals. But the stuffed animals he prefers are still plush and soft. He's not really into severed heads on walls with lifeless glass marbles glued into their eye sockets.
He's always liked for me to read him Dr. Seuss books with all those bizarre, animal-like creatures reciting nonsense-sounding verses that are really incredibly wise. In school, he's into science and learning real facts about real animals.
It would never occur to me on his birthday to say, "Nicky, now that you're 8, we should go out into the woods with guns and find some real animals and blow them away." I guess we're just not raising him right.
Believe it or not, there actually is some good news in this legislation for all the reasonable people of Wisconsin who have been publicly embarrassed over the years by the blood lust of the state's hunting lobby in promoting the killing every living creature from the bird of peace to kitty cats.
This bill is motivated by desperation. It turns out there is one living species that even the most boorish hunters are terrified could be headed for extinction hunters themselves.
A 2004 study by the Wisconsin Conservation Congress and other pro-hunting groups found in Wisconsin that for every 100 hunters who stopped hunting because they stopped breathing, joined PETA, etc. only 53 new hunters replaced them.
The specter looms that this powerful lobby, which has had its way perverting state wildlife conservation laws for decades, could have its political clout cut in half in just a generation.
It's true what they say about teenagers today. You try to raise your kids right and instill your own moral values in them, but peer pressure can be overwhelming. Before you know it, they are rebelling against everything you hold dear and refusing to go out and kill anything.
Part of it is that kids today are just too lazy to get up off of their couches to go up north to get drunk and play poker and shoot anything that moves. They sit around playing "Grand Theft Auto" for hours on end, but can't be bothered to go out and actually lay waste to anything in real life.
Maybe it's time to reinstate the draft. The Army will straighten them out.
If the pool of hunters 12 and over isn't enough to replenish the aging, blaze-orange-clad dinosaurs lumbering through our forests, the only thing to do is to lower the killing age. You have to develop a healthy blood lust in children before they are old enough to be distracted by other varieties of lust.
As absurd as an 8-year-old hunting age may sound to rational human beings, Gunderson sees it as a very responsible compromise. He claims there is considerable support among hunters for abolishing all age restrictions on hunting.
Sadly, we don't have any difficulty at all believing that. If hunters actually support passing out high-powered, deadly weapons to 8-year-olds, why wouldn't they be just as willing to arm 2- and 3-year-olds?
For that matter, why should babies in swaddling clothes be denied the unabashed joy that comes from squeezing their tiny fingers around a trigger to bag their first buck?
Joel McNally of Milwaukee writes a weekly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: [email protected]
Published: February 17, 2006
Joel McNally: Let 8-year-olds lug their booster seats to the hunt
By Joel McNally
It would never occur to me on his birthday to say, 'Nicky, now that you're 8, we should go out into the woods with guns and find some real animals and blow them away.'Even for the gun-addled, NRA-groveling politicians in Madison, the proposed legislation to arm 8-year-old children with high-powered, deadly weapons is so absurd it takes your breath away.
The idiocy is compounded by the fact that these beginning hunters would not have to take any training. Currently, beginning hunters, who must be at least 12 years old under state law, are required to pass a hunter safety course. But the proposed law to lower the hunting age in Wisconsin from 12 to 8, which already has passed the Republican-led Assembly, would not require any gun safety training at all for 8-year-olds tottering through the woods with lethal weapons almost as big as they are.
"Let's get them out there and see if they're interested," says state Rep. Scott Gunderson, R-Waterford, the bill's sponsor. "If they are, they can go through hunter's safety when they turn 12." If they live to be 12, that is.
It hasn't been lost on the critics of this gun-crazed legislation that the state recently passed a law requiring 8-year-olds to ride in booster seats in automobiles for their safety. Now, perhaps these children could take their booster seats into the woods with them to prop up those big, heavy rifles so their little arms don't get so tired waiting to get a really good shot off.
AP Photo/Oshkosh Northwestern, Laura May
Bryon Klabunde of Hancock,Wis. brings the maturity of adulthood to hunting.
Do these legislators know any 8-year-olds? I do. My grandson is about to turn 8. He's a terrific kid, but I have never once considered buying him a deadly weapon for his birthday next month.
Like a lot of kids his age, Nicky really likes animals. But the stuffed animals he prefers are still plush and soft. He's not really into severed heads on walls with lifeless glass marbles glued into their eye sockets.
He's always liked for me to read him Dr. Seuss books with all those bizarre, animal-like creatures reciting nonsense-sounding verses that are really incredibly wise. In school, he's into science and learning real facts about real animals.
It would never occur to me on his birthday to say, "Nicky, now that you're 8, we should go out into the woods with guns and find some real animals and blow them away." I guess we're just not raising him right.
Believe it or not, there actually is some good news in this legislation for all the reasonable people of Wisconsin who have been publicly embarrassed over the years by the blood lust of the state's hunting lobby in promoting the killing every living creature from the bird of peace to kitty cats.
This bill is motivated by desperation. It turns out there is one living species that even the most boorish hunters are terrified could be headed for extinction hunters themselves.
A 2004 study by the Wisconsin Conservation Congress and other pro-hunting groups found in Wisconsin that for every 100 hunters who stopped hunting because they stopped breathing, joined PETA, etc. only 53 new hunters replaced them.
The specter looms that this powerful lobby, which has had its way perverting state wildlife conservation laws for decades, could have its political clout cut in half in just a generation.
It's true what they say about teenagers today. You try to raise your kids right and instill your own moral values in them, but peer pressure can be overwhelming. Before you know it, they are rebelling against everything you hold dear and refusing to go out and kill anything.
Part of it is that kids today are just too lazy to get up off of their couches to go up north to get drunk and play poker and shoot anything that moves. They sit around playing "Grand Theft Auto" for hours on end, but can't be bothered to go out and actually lay waste to anything in real life.
Maybe it's time to reinstate the draft. The Army will straighten them out.
If the pool of hunters 12 and over isn't enough to replenish the aging, blaze-orange-clad dinosaurs lumbering through our forests, the only thing to do is to lower the killing age. You have to develop a healthy blood lust in children before they are old enough to be distracted by other varieties of lust.
As absurd as an 8-year-old hunting age may sound to rational human beings, Gunderson sees it as a very responsible compromise. He claims there is considerable support among hunters for abolishing all age restrictions on hunting.
Sadly, we don't have any difficulty at all believing that. If hunters actually support passing out high-powered, deadly weapons to 8-year-olds, why wouldn't they be just as willing to arm 2- and 3-year-olds?
For that matter, why should babies in swaddling clothes be denied the unabashed joy that comes from squeezing their tiny fingers around a trigger to bag their first buck?
Joel McNally of Milwaukee writes a weekly column for The Capital Times. E-mail: [email protected]
Published: February 17, 2006
