Get Yourself a Gun
Whenever the madness of massive gun ownership is challenged you can bet one of the first responses will be "How dare you libruls try to stop us enjoying the healthy and natural sport of hunting with our children", or words to that effect. But this is one of those many issues on which I find it hard to empathize with my conservative fellow human beings. I can't imagine ever training a gun on an animal peacefully going about its business, getting on with its life, and then squeezing the trigger and blowing its brains out or bursting its heart, blood spattered over the great outdoors.
This is at its most obscene in the practice of "Internet hunting" where you can do the same thing from the comfort of your home at the click of a mouse button. But it has no less horror for coming at the end of a long healthy hike through the woods with your oldest son clutching his first hunting rifle and chatting happily about the meaning of life.
How does it enter the soul, this comfortable, but triumphant, death-dealing? How do hunters get away with the euphemism that slaughter of other living beings is not only "sport", but an essential part of being human, and not to be restricted in any way?
At least some of the blame goes to the religious ideology that trumpets human dominion over all living things. If we have some kind of supreme authority over the world, then, rather like a prison guard and his inmates, we can do anything we like to that world. Animals, in this view, live only so long as we choose to allow them to do so. They have no right to life of their own, all of their rights are given by us and can be instantly revoked at a whim.
But there is even more to it I think. Even if you believe that your imaginary friend made you a lord of the universe, it still remains that pressing that trigger, shooting that crossbow, ending that life, requires a complete absence of empathy with another living being. Requires that you not even consider the pain and then oblivion of the animal itself, or the pain and grief of the family and other group members left behind.
And such lack of empathy can only come, surely, if you recognize no kinship between yourself and that wolf, that moose, that seal, that duck, that gorilla, that kangaroo. Recognize no shared emotions, feelings, ideas, sensations; no commonality of life. And for that to be true you must, surely, see yourself as having been created separately. For even the most cursory knowledge of evolution would make you unable to pull that trigger on creatures who, being your relatives, have so much in common with you.
Is the "intelligent design" movement just an alibi for killing?
Plenty of empathy, though not for hunters, at The Watermelon Blog.
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"Perhaps what separates humans from other animals is the desperate quest that our species has to find something that distinguishes us from the other animals."
-Ingrid Newkirk
I think she's right, but they're not going to find it.
See David Horton's Profile
Thanks everyone for a good discussion. Hi there Dap, hope you will drop by soon. Plebeiansw
Mr Horton--I was curious about how strict a vegetarian you were--I would rather see people who eat meat do at least part of what it takes to put it on the table as opposed to just buying it from the cast at the megamart.
Skeet isn't nearly as tasty as pheasant ( a non-native and somewhat invasive species to the US, BTW).
See David Horton's Profile
Skeet are those clay targets that get flung up into the air, right?!
"Animals, in this view, live only so long as we choose to allow them to do so."
It's really no different than humans treat each other. All of us are alive because someone chose not to abort us.
If anything, humans are consistent.
David,
The right to own arms has little to do with hunting.
...or self defense.
Actually self-defense is more like it, as part of community defense. Community defense being the primary reason the right shall not be infringed.
Self defense is covered under the 9th amendment--or are you seriously trying to argue there is no right to effective selfdefense
> Is the "intelligent design" movement just an alibi for killing?
No. As living proof of this I offer myself, an atheist and a lifelong hunter. (By the way, I know that liberal is not spelled "librul.")
You make several assumptions that do not hold up on analysis. First, the view that is expressed in Genesis is that mankind has dominion over the earth, not that God simply gave mankind carte blanche to kill at will. Your baseline assumption -- creationism is a moral justification for killing animals because God simply put man in charge -- does not hold up.
The second bad assumption is the tacit assumption that human beings are different from other animals. If a bear eats a fish, this is "natural." But, if a man kills a deer then it's "squeezing the trigger and blowing its brains out or bursting its heart, blood spattered over the great outdoors."
Of course, if we drop the assumption that there is a god and that this god made human beings "uber-animals," then how does it make sense to draw this moralistic line?
The viewpoint that is expressed in this blog really just reflects the extent to which "modern" human beings have built ivory towers in which they live in ignorance of the fact that they are themselves animals that cannot live unless other living beings are killed, whether directly or indirectly.
When you leave the ivory tower, animals kill and eat each other all the time.
non-human animals do kill and eat eachother. for survival.
with rare exception they do not kill for sport...ie
i am not a fan of hunting at all, but i do see and respect the distinction, including when extended to certain activities of human animals.
dominion suggests responsibility and stewardship, not recreational destruction. this of course applies to the entire planet.
overall, i think we're blowing it.
> non-human animals do kill and eat eachother. for survival.
> with rare exception they do not kill for sport...ie
First, how do you know this? This seems to grow from an implicit and unstated assumption that human animals exist in a different realm than non-human animals. Reference to the vague concept of "sport" or "fun" does not really mean anything. Why do human animals enjoy the challenge of gathering their own food? I like to hunt, fish, and grow food in my garden. All three activities are somewhat different, but I enjoy them all. Presumably, at some base level I enjoy them because they are "survival" activities that have been reinforced over thousands of years of natural selection. So I guess I do it for "sport" and for "fun" since I enjoy it but could just go to the grocery store and buy vegetables that other people grew and animals that other people killed. I don't see the significance of that internal, subjective motivation.
Let's turn it around -- what word would you use if a bear killed a fish, but it COULD have just eaten berries and survived? Was it a "sport" and "fun" kill for the bear? (How would you prove or disprove that it was? I certainly don't know what the bear was thinking.)
The hunters I know about hunt for 2 primary reasons--putting meat on the table or in the freezer (their own or at food banks) or to keep prairie dog populations down in their pastures (with a major goal of keeping livestock from breaking legs when their hooves drop into the holes). Do they also happen to enjoy doing it--yes they do.
You can be sure it's not about the meat. It's holding the power of life or death over other creatures. Like god does over his. Nothing comes close to that feeling. You can see it in their eyes after a kill.
Mr Horton--of course you realize that the 2nd amendment is primarily about self defense, with hunting as a a secondary benefit--so unless you would deny the right of effective self defense--you have no basis to support gun bans. On ethical grounds--your compliants about hunting are ONLY consistent if you are somewhere between vegan and somewhat strict vegetarian--since to get dairy products--the animals that are going to be milked need to give birth (and what are you going to do with the offspring you are not going to add to your herd to milk in the future?).
Dear Dr. Horton,
How are ya? Great to see you posting again, sorry I haven't dropped in on you over at the watermellon blog, I've slowed down quite a bit in the last eight months.
Raised as a hunter, there would have been a time that I would have argued with ya on this post, but no longer, I now agree with your eloquent points. Be well, Agape, dap
I see your point and it was well expressed, and I agree. I have hunted in the past and shot a couple of deer and a couple dozen birds. It was like a right of passage to manhood at the time. Distasteful, but I was provoked onto doing it like proving toughness in a peer group challenge. When you do it, you are aware oif the murdering aspect to it. Especially with lagre sensory animals. And it is a psychotic power trip to shoot that thing, to take a life, legally, and actually get away with it. And yes, I'm done with it for sure even though i do still own guns and shoot then at targets, paper, metal and clay. And I enjoy the skill and self control and precision and power that are all intertwined. And I know quite a few hunters, who have huhted a while and they are twon camps. The macho morons who get drunk the night before and talk tough and are egged on, unthinkingly, like dominionists - just like you say. And the other solitude, challenge seekers who stalk and slueth and yes, they kill, and this is at least a moral and ethical activity as a throw back to a different and honest and simpler time and life.
My comment to you is that incredibly, these hunters are both conservationists and preservationists - as selfish as a percentage of their motivation is, and the taking is only small, by law and by an interest in the continuation of the activity. You don't know how many wetlands have been protected, how many forests have been sheltered, in this greedy world I assure you without that you would have immoral criminals who would have no problem shooting or trapping or running down every last species of wildlife for any small economic gain available.
You are a brilliant man and a beautiful writer. Your distaste is justified and i share it even though I balance it. I am infinitely more outraged at line fishing for sharks in the islands to sever their fins and dump them while they are still alive. To make a tasteless soup. To poison magnificent lions in africa by the thousands so the won't kill a ranchers cow, to stuff caged ducks full of grain on an hourly basis to make some kind of fatty liver horsd'oveure. I like you and this is how I proiritize my world and opinion. I would also like to invite you for some skeet shooting if you are ever in Colorado.
Belief in 'Intelligent Design' is just an admission of the lack of mental capacity to understand the nature of the universe. Since they created their God in their own image, and they are all sociopaths, it follows that they conceive their omnipotent God as the biggest possible bully.
Not that I'm big into intelligent design, but do YOU understand the nature of the universe? Have you taken numerous physics, chemistry, math & astronomy courses plus read a ton of extra books on multiple theories of cosmology, relativity, particle physics, etc....?? If not, then you just go along with whatever is "scientifically acceptable" to believe about the universe, without really understanding anything at all, a "believer" if you will. I've taken all of those courses and I still don't understand the nature of the universe. Nobody really does. Intelligent design is a lame attempt to marry God and science without involving much science, I'll agree with that.
And while we're at it, how did you come to the conclusion that "they" are all sociopaths? Try being a little more open minded please.
Don't expect an atheistic "progressive" to be open minded--they are too interesting in proving how "superior" they are to people that are more traditional
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