Guns, Drones, Pigeons, And Outright Stupidity
An Illinois animal rights group calling themselves SHARK has embarked on an all-out crusade against Wing Pointe, an exclusive Pennsylvania hunt club that hosts legal pigeon shoots on their own property. Most recently, SHARK upped the ante by launching an aerial drone, hoping to hover the thing over the shooters while capturing live video of the shoot. Not surprisingly, however, during its most recent ‘mission’, SHARK’s drone was shot down while in flight, allegedly by one the club’s shooters.
Lots of red meat here for all sides, indeed.
SHARK, for its part, is trying to get the Pennsylvania state government to make it a crime for the hunt club to capture, release and shoot the pigeons at almost point-blank range. The pigeons are not eaten; they are merely killed for sport and dumped into piles to rot. Now, as a hunter myself, I’m the first to say killing animals strictly for sport sickens me and only serves to give all hunters a bad name. Especially when the animal is trapped in a box, and then released directly in front of a double-barreled twelve gauge.
Trying to defend such an activity as being part of America’s hunting tradition or history is just plain stupid and counterproductive to hunting on all fronts. Thus, I can empathize with SHARK on this level; however, it is their methodology I have a major issue with.
Regardless of the so-called ‘reality’ in the United States of the litigious and overtly-offended, it is inarguably outside the rights of one person or group of people to dictate what another person or group of people can do on their own property. The only exception is when through the exercise of one’s rights, harm is done to another’s rights, in which case the matter is settled through the civil courts. This is THE basis for our nation’s founding, that being, Private Property Rights.
The last thing we need is more illegal and unconstitutional ‘criminal’ laws based on who can scream the loudest and grease the most palms in order to control other people when no harm is being done to those who are doing the screaming. Though we may ‘submit’ to these demands (and laws) out of fear of reprisal (fines, imprisonment, physical violence from those who are more heavily armed than we are), this simply does not change the fact that no one has any claim to what you do with that which you own. Period. To say or argue otherwise is to advocate for slavery.
So, where does this leave us? Simple.
The members of SHARK (instead of being a gang of ill-named panty waists that relies on government thugs to do their work in the name of enslaving a bunch of idiots with guns who call themselves hunters), has a number of options that would meet their desires to protect the pigeons AND INCREASE LIBERTY while RESPECTING the rights of others (yes, even idiots have rights). They could:
1) Start a pigeon farm and breed more pigeons than the hunt club kills, thus offsetting the net damage to the pigeon population,
2) Lobby Wing Pointe’s members and neighbors to discontinue their financial support of the club, in which case the club would go out of business, or,
3) Buy the club and shut it down.
Those are their choices. Hard work as that may be (compared to whining to state lawmakers), were they successful, SHARK would not only achieve their goal but would do so in a manner that is consistent with how America is SUPPOSED to function.
Anything less is nothing more than a complete violation of the club’s Private Property Rights by a group is unharmed through the threat of violence at the hands of a third-party which has no authority to control one group at the whim of another group.
Long live the Republic, and down with democracy!
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