I find this story disturbing on so many levels. Here are only 2 examples:
The idea came last year while viewing another Web site on which cameras posted in the wild are used to snap photos of animals.I'm not a fan of hunting, but I understand how some people enjoy it. Yet these people were looking at a nature website as if it were hunting porn, salivating over killing everything in view of a camera hundreds or thousands of miles away.
"We were looking at a beautiful whitetail buck and my friend said, 'If you just had a gun for that.' A little light bulb went off in my head," he said.
In the California story:
"We don't think Californians should be able to hunt sitting at their computers at home."As odious as internet hunting may be, if it's legal in Texas, how can California legislators ban Californians from participating? It's one thing to have control over criminal acts in your own state. You can't prevent people from engaging in legal acts in another.
10 comments:
I agree with Mike. Guns are cool and all, and no one should restrict my right to own or carry one, but this whole internet thing turns it in to a video game, and that's not the sort of paradigm we ought to be pushing when it comes to guns.
It takes the respect out of hunting. Killing animals should not be brought down to the level of a video game. Animals and guns deserve far more respect than that.
Besides, how safe is that?
This is the most disturbing use of the internet I've ever heard.
Wow, something we all agree on! We should start a group, "Conservatives and Liberals Against Remote Hunting through the Internet." CLARHI for short.
But what do you think of California trying to ban its residents from participating? Should they be able to do that, even if the hunting is in another state?
I really hesitate to allow any sort of regulation of the Internet. I don't think it should be illegal for someone to get up, go to their computer, and find a site that lets you remotely shoot a gun. It should be illegal, however, to set up a gun that can be controlled remotely like this. So no, California should not regulate the use side, in-state or not, but they should regulate the 'set-up side.'
I'm not trying to force a debate. I just wanted to point out that California is doing it - it's not a hypothetical notion of mine. And my worry is if they can make it illegal for a California resident to participate in an activity that is legal elsewhere, what else might they try to do to force their ideas on other people? How soon do you think your own state may try something similar (for example, Georgia passing a law saying GA residents can't purchase and use fireworks even when in another state where they are legal).
Scott, you are starting to sound like a Republican!! That fireworks law is real. Until about two years (when most of them were legalized) you could not purchase fireworks in North Carolina. Further, you could not use the fireworks you'd legally purchased at South of the Border in South Carolina after you went back to NC. (In writing this, I'm reminded of that scene in Pulp Fiction where they talk about hash bars in Amsterdam and Jon Travolta says "proprietor" in a funny way.) There are probably lots of things that some states allow and others do not (gay marriage, anyone?)
Did you guys see the piece they did on the Daily Show about this whole internet hunting thing? It was hysterical! Samantha Bee interviewed the guy and he was claiming that it was a good way for blind people to safely wield a gun. He seriously believed, at least according to the way the story was edited, that he was performing a service to humanity. Unreal.
Really, Oh Really! Republicans are people too. And no thanks on the offer of gay marriage...
Here in WI, fireworks are legal, and every year around the 4th of July, we are innundated with Minnesotans coming across the border to buy them and bring them back across the border to their homes (where they are illegal). In response, MN cops have been setting up checkpoints on the border where they will randomly select cars to search upon reentry to the state, and I find this perhaps more troubling than a state saying what it's citizens can do in another state (but that is troubling to me, too). I really don't see probable cause for a search here.
The NRA continues to allow Charlton "Cold Dead Hands" Heston to be their lead dog, so something tells me that PR is not exactly their foremost concern. With that in mind, I would not be too surprised to see them get behind this movement.
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