I have mixed feelings about jail. The point of jail is retribution for something that was done – if justice was restorative or rehabilitative we would have a different system. Obviously vigilante justice is something that no civil society should desire instead of law. And I do agree that for some people, the death that they caused is something they have to live with for the rest of their lives and it pretty much doesn’t matter what else we do to them as punishment, as their suffering will continue until they die (it is in their nature). But for others, they suffer very little if at all. So do we have the system we do because we cannot accurately distinguish between the two types of person and we want to ensure that punishment occurs?

I don’t have any answer, just questions 🙁

In any event, other than just letting the situation remain the same … people can more or less get their hands on whatever guns they want without any commitment to properly learning gun safety, what is your alternative suggestion? Furthermore, one of the big questions we are discussing here is enforceable, or more specifically, the social process whereby those who kill their friends and families have “suffered enough” as an excuse to ignore existing laws.

For the most part, we are not talking about new laws.

So I’m for gun safety. Everyone should be taught gun safety. But you can’t easily do this when guns are stigmatized or made illegal. Calling people “gun nuts” and posting sensational stories helps stigmatize guns.

Our uniforms are khaki and brown. Sometimes I wonder, even outside of hunting season, what I would say if I were in an emergency. “Look for the person who blends in with the sand!” I now keep a neon pink bandanna with me, just in case.

OK, last time I had a beer with a hunter, here’s how the conversation went:

“Yeah, jeb tells me thars been a lot of wolves over there by the Old Grade Road”

“Oh really? Do tell”

“Eyup. Jeeter and Bubba saw four five of them wolves when they were checkin’ out their deer stands just last week”

“Really? Interesting.

“You bethya. And we’re plannin’ to do something about it too.”

“Oh really? What might that be”

“Let’s just say they’s gonna be an un-author-ized wolf hunt over by the old grade road some time next month, when the leaves done fell.”

“Oh. OK, well, that’s interesting.”

So yes, there is a theoretical alliance between hunters and nature lovers. But these days ,what happens, is that the hunters pay for a lot of the nature-supporting state programs through their fees (at least ’round here, the legislature has set it up that way) and the hunters have lots of guns. So, they pretty much hold the nature lovers hostage. Or should I say, they hold the wildlife hostage, and the nature lovers are being extorted.

I don’t know if that wolf hunt happened or not. I’ll probably find out this weekend.

And a hundred years ago, it did. Think George Grinnel, founder of the Audubon society. Think Teddy Roosevelt.

But today, gun owners are aligned with the right. One might almost say politically captured. And environmentalists are part of the right’s target groups. Now, yeah, many gun owners don’t hunt. Many hunters only go into the field twice a year during hunting season. And for many, it’s mostly a social thing. Nonetheless. There was that affinity for a long time. Maybe it will return some decades hence.

I’ve done quite a bit of field archaeology (survey mostly) during hunting season in hunting areas. On occassion, we’ve brought along a boom box to supplement the blaze orange. Sadly we annoyed some hunters but in the long run, better that they don’t shoot us accidentally all way around. Also, this is not a good time to wear your deer suit.

On the matter of the wabbits, I remember, when I was younger, my father and grandfather having conversations about gun and ammo size vs. prey size (they both hunted for food, not sport – neither one has anything but fish and shed antlers on any of their walls). One of the stories my dad tells about not using a shot gun on a small mammal involves a skunk that was under the cabin. As it turns out, a skunk shoots one stink at you if you upset it, but it is full of about 100 stinks that all get released if you blow it up with a shotgun slug. This was the mental image I had when reading about the father and son hunting for wabbits with a shotgun.