[hijack]Please tell me you’re exaggerating. You had to get an OK from the school to take your own child on a trip? That’s the biggest load of bollocks I’ve ever heard; all that should be necessary is a call to the teacher a week or so ahead of time telling him/her what’s going to be happening and asking him/her to please put together a homework packet so the kidlet doesn’t fall behind.[/hijack]
England, small place, lot of people/sq mile, few game animals.
USA, large place, not near as many people / sq mile, lots of game animals.
YMMV
How does the size of a country, population and quantity of game animals have any bearing on the morality of killing for fun?
America, large place, lots of black people (compared to England), lots of plantations to be worked, therefore slavery OK?
Hyperbole, of course. I go to a firing range once a year in order to remain competent. I will say, however, that a cop friend who helped me learn to shoot and helped me choose my gun and ammo, told me to shoot an intruder until my gun “clicked”. His reasoning is that in order to shoot an intruder I must feel my life is threatened. I am not trained to assess precisely when I am “safe”, therefore his training involved shooting the intruder until my gun is emptied. But yes, the speed loader reference was hyperbole.
No exaggeration, sad but true.
The “fun” isn’t solely tied up in the killing part. Successfully bagging a game animal takes a good deal of work, and pulling the trigger is the last step in a long involved process. Are you stupid or ignorant enough to think that it’s possible to wander through the woods at random and just stumble over a harvestable deer?
Bullshit like this pisses me off, you worthless asshole.
I’m not even going to bother to address the flagrant stupidity required to equate the enslavement of human beings with the hunting of animals. Any person with at least moderately subnormal intelligence (i.e. not you) can see how that’s not worth discussing.
You seem to be conveniently forgetting that slavey was a legacy system that we inherited from you fucking people. You also seem to be forgetting that you hypocritical bastards prided yourselves on your “enlightened” banning of slavery in Britain while cheerfully allowing it to continue in your Carribean colonies for decades longer.
The US Constitution was ratified in 1787. Importation of slaves was banned in 1816, and slavery itself was finally eradicated in 1865 after a somewhat heated debate. Once left to our own devices we eliminated the practice in a hell of a lot less time than the centuries it took you people to do it.
On the subject of slavery, the British are the last people on earth with any room to throw stones, so sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up. You ignorant piece of shit.
Um, Exgineer, none of your furious sputtering actually addresses amarone’s point (in response to GusNSpot) that the morality of killing for sport doesn’t depend on the size or population density of a country.
And I’m speaking as someone who is generally okay with the morality of sport killing (as long as it isn’t unnecessarily cruel or wasteful, applies only to excess or pest populations, etc. etc. etc.) I agree with you that hunting is not morally equivalent to human slavery. But amarone still has a valid point that moral issues don’t depend on how big your country is or how many game animals it contains.
But hunting for sport is about as much as a moral issue as fucking for fun. Hunting is a behavior that was developed to ensure the survival of the human race because we need to eat. Fucking is a behavior whose purpose is to ensure the survival of the human race by producing lots of little human beings. These behaviors are locked in our genes, and people who get up on an imaginary high horse and start screaming “immoral” when the subject of hunting comes up are 1: stupid, 2: wrong, and 3: idiots. Bottom line: they are squeamish about the idea of hunting and seek to impose their bias on everyone else by condemning hunting on made up “moral” grounds.
What a load of fucking horseshit.
If hunting is “locked in our genes,” why does such a small proportion of the population engage in it? Surely, if it’s as biologically and genetically determined as sex, we should all be out there doing it.
You are correct that human beings need to eat, but the human race has actually arrived at a point where, for most of us, going out there and killing an animal is not a necessary part of our survival. Furthermore, most critics of hunting in this thread have drawn a very clear distinction between the morality of hunting for food and the morality of hunting for fun. The fact that you choose to ignore this says more about you than about their moral arguments.
Just because you don’t feel that a particular topic is a moral issue does not make it so. People draw their moral boundaries at different places, and last time i looked, weirddave had not been assigned the arbiter of where morality starts and finishes. You are free to disagree with other people’s moral positions, and to take different moral positions of your own, but it’s simple idiocy to suggest that you know what other people’s morals are and are not, or that you should be the one to determine what is and is not a valid moral issue.
You draw a distinction between morality and bias. But what is morality if not a closely held set of biases or preconceptions about what constitutes appropriate behaviour? Yes, some people have a “bias” against hunting. But that bias may well, for most of these people, have a basis in their moral code, their set of moral values. Your argument is nonsensical. It would be like accusing someone who holds murder to be immoral of merely having a bias against homicide. Well, sure, but it doesn’t mean that the bias is devoid of a moral foundation.
By all means, disagree with or oppose the moral positions of others. But when you actually deny that their positions are based in morality, you simply demonstrate your ignorance.
[QUOTE=Weirddave]
1: stupid, 2: wrong, and 3: idiots.QUOTE]
While there’s argument on both sides, the pro-killing folks do seem to have…more agressive rhetoric. There are other examples in this thread that I didn’t quote.
I wonder why?
Sailboat
My father acquainted me with the operation of all his guns as soon as I could hold them. He taught me to respect their destructive capacity, how to check, load, unload, and maintain them all properly, and how to shoot. It was exceptionally valuable knowledge, and I will certainly do the same thing for my children.
This is what happens when oversensitivity and ecological ignorance meet, children. Avoid it.
Overpopulation of a game species makes hunting perfectly morally acceptable. In fact, in cases of extreme overpopulation, such as that of white-tailed deer (in the Southern states,) purposefully culling the herd is more humane. It saves the remainder of the herd from starvation and disease.
Not really. We’ve merely arrived at a place where we can hire somebody else to do the killing for us, and deliver our meat in nice, neat packages.
So let me get this straight mhendo. You are denying that human beings are predators? That we are omnivorous, and thus by design, meat is a large part of our diet? Weird. You’ve said things I disagreed with in the past, but this is the first time I’ve noticed you making a “the sky is green” type statement. Human beings are predators. This behavior is encoded in our genes. Are you denying that?
As for the moral issue, “morality” is one of those words that is often hijacked by fringe groups to try and give their particular cause the appearance of a legitimacy that it lacks. Thus you have religious extremists screaming about the “immorality” of allowing 2 people who happen to be the same gender to marry, You have prudes muttering about how “immoral” it is for consenting adults to fuck if they chose to, and you have people who don’t like hunting screaming “OMG! She killed a bear! That’s immoral!” For something to truly be a moral issue, it’s got to be something that a super majority of the population would agree with, somewhere around the 90% mark. Murder passes this test, as does rape and I would imagine theft. Drugs use does not, neither does prohibition, although I would like to point out the huge moral component of the arguments those who favor legislating what people chose top put in their own bodies employ, again, these are people who are trying to give their pet causes the appearance of legitimacy that they do not possess on their merits. All this applies to public or social morality, of course, personal morality is another issue entirely.
So, when someone comes up and says that something like hunting is a moral issue, I accept that, for them, it absolutely is. They should personally refrain from hunting. However, that is all they have the right to do. Personal moral issues are just that, personal, and one has absolutely no right to apply their own standards to another person. Hunting, abortion, homosexuality, sex, religion, God, etc…these are all things that an individual decides for themselves, and are only “moral” issues for that person to wrestle with on an individual basis. Thus I may have no moral qualms about getting an abortion while to you it might be the most morally repugnant thing in the world. That’s cool, I’ll get that abortion and you have the baby. Either way, each of us made the moral choice, and we both have no business sticking our noses into the other’s choice.
I hope all of you who think killing for fun is immoral don’t enjoy that steak next time you eat it. It had to be killed to sit on your plate. Eating, whether you like it or not, is part of the process of killing it. So if you enjoy your steak, you are enjoying killing the animal. Just because it was killed by a bolt in a factory where your delicate senses didn’t need to be offended, doesn’t mean it wasn’t killed for YOUR pleasure.
Certainly I see a difference between trophy hunting and hunting for food, however, to say it’s immoral to enjoy it when it’s for food is fucking ludicrous. Was it immoral if the Native Americans enjoyed their hunting ritual dance before they went out hunting, and after they went out hunting?
I’d like to see someone explain to me, how it’s less moral to kill an animal yourself and enjoy it, than it is to enjoy a steak procured from a factory where cows are kept confined their entire lives only to be killed by a hydraulic bolt and then shipped off to Costco for your enjoyment. You can say it’s unecessary in this day and age to hunt it yourself, but it’s unecessary to eat meat at all. If you’re not enjoying your macrobiotic Seitan rather than a steak, then what the fuck are you on about?
As annoying as vegans are, they are the ONLY ones who have a leg to stand on in this argument, because at least they aren’t being hypocrites.
Erek
Impressvie feat, no doubt, but I’d be much more impressed if she done kilt it using nothing more than a good-natured grin.
[QUOTE=Sailboat]
Because they are being found at fault by those that consider themselves to be morally superior.
I suspect if there was an effort to make hunting wild game a required part of public education there might be some ‘aggressive rhetoric’ from the anti-hunting crowd.
But it isn’t relevant to the morality of killing for fun.
To lay it out more clearly: irrespective of issues like overpopulation, pest control, low-impact meat production, survival, etc. etc., is it moral to kill an animal just because you enjoy killing it?
Me personally, I don’t care much one way or the other about hunters’ personal motivations, as long as the hunters’ actions are properly regulated by the law and the relevant issues of game species population, etc. etc. etc.
However, some people do feel that the sheer enjoyment of the hunt, by itself, is not a morally acceptable motive for offing a fellow creature. There is nothing a priori illogical or “idiotic” about holding such a position.
You certainly don’t have to agree with it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a valid viewpoint. And it isn’t adequately refuted by pointing out that you can also enjoy hunting without making enjoyment your sole motive.
Duh wha’? 
Morality only applies to the issues that everybody, or nearly everybody, already agrees about? I must not be understanding you, because this makes absolutely no sense to me. How can we prescribe to other people what they should consider a “moral issue” or not?
Well, that’s what happens with controversies over moral issues: people find fault with actions they consider to be immoral. Considering how ancient the moral debate over killing animals is, I’m really startled that so many pro-hunting advocates can still get upset about the fact that some people object to hunting on moral grounds. I mean, for mercy’s sake, take it up with Pythagoras and the Buddha, why don’t you?
Here’s an idea.
Could the Maryland Government not just find a group of unemployed people with the requisite licences to go out and cull some of the bear population?
It lessens the threat of bears and provides a brief working stint for a few people.