Where Can A Baby Get a Birth Certificate and Hunting License in the Same Year?
March 14, 2009 Yesterday I was doing some research for "Here Sweetie, Have a Gun for Your Fifth Birthday." I could have said "for your third" or “for your first” birthday, but I decided no one would believe me. The fifth birthday was unbelievable enough.
I’m from the U.S. so I did some more research on children and hunting, this time for the U.S. As we all know, parents taking their young children hunting is hardly just an Australian occurrence. On the state of Vermont website I found the following fee schedule:
A resident or nonresident lifetime fishing, hunting, or combination fishing and hunting license may be obtained from the Fish & Wildlife Department. Fees are as follows:
for children under 1 year old = 5X current adult license price.
for children 1-15 years old = 15X current adult license price.
for adults 16-24 years old = 30X current adult license price.
for adults 25-64 years old = 25X current adult license price.
What on earth are we teaching our children! Apparently in Vermont, a one year-old child can have a license to hunt.
This week in the news is a story of seventeen year-old boy in Germany who shot and killed fifteen schoolchildren and then shot himself. He had taken the gun from his father's collection of sixteen. In Alabama in the US, a man shot dead eleven people: seven family members then three people he didn’t even know, and finally himself.
The very understandable reaction to these tragedies has been shock, anger, grief, and disbelief. How could this happen? The commonly-heard comment after such tragedies is “I never would have thought he would do something like this. He seemed like a pretty avarage kid.”
Maybe in today’s world, where children aged three and five go hunting with their fathers, where babies can get a hunting license, where teenagers play games in which they perfect their skills at killing virtual people, for many people this is the terrible new “normal.”
Reader Comments (6)
Their viewpoint is they are "thinning the herd" since deer eat a lot of food and damage a lot of trees. (There are no longer "big cats" to thin the herd for us naturally.) They are eating off the land and not creating a bigger carbon footprint since they are being self-sufficient.
They take pride in taking down the deer in one direct shot and do not injure and leave a deer to suffer. A "clean kill" is very important to them. They do not want a suffering animal.
The Native Americans believe the animal will present itself as a sacrifice for food.
Yes, I know you do not agree with these practices. I offer this discussion for better understanding of the path they have chosen.
(See comment on previous blog for greater detail)
Sue K
In discussions with the hunters in my family, their comment is that true hunters rarely kill people. They kill to eat. They know how powerful a gun is and respect it as a tool to provide food for their families. (There are no trophy animal heads on the walls.)
It would be interesting to see if there are any studies on if these crazy people were food hunters. Maybe a few. The people I know that have lots of personal weapons are fearful. When they shoot for the first time and it is towards a person, they are probably shocked at the devastation and therefore turn it on themselves. Our TV shows are pretty "clean" compared to how it ends up in real life. Also, those people appear in another episode in another show or the game can be "reset" so the person reappears. There is a disconnect with reality.
People with handguns/assault weapons and people with rifles/shotguns for hunting do have a different focus. I would be hesitant to lump them together. The hunting family members and others I know don't give their kids toy guns. Respect is taught from the beginning, and yes, very young. A gun is never a "toy" in a hunters house.
I am not passing judgement here, merely explaining a different lifestyle.
Sue K
Amituofo...