Palin is a sick piece of work

iVillage Member
Registered: 09-12-2008
Palin is a sick piece of work
134
Fri, 09-12-2008 - 3:46pm

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Avatar for thefalliblefiend
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 5:49pm

"I guess I just don't understand why someone would WANT to own a semi-automatic weapon"

A semi-auto is not that big a deal. A few years ago I gave my target pistol to my dad who was thinking about buying one. I used to go to the range nearly every day after work to drop a few boxes from my Ruger bull-barrell .22, semi-auto. It's a very nice target pistol.

A semi-auto is very different from an automatic (machine) gun. Most hunting rifles (at least most of the ones I saw growing up) are semi-auto or bolt action. Most hunting shotguns, for example, are semi-automatic (although my old .410 was a single shot).




Edited 9/17/2008 5:59 pm ET by thefalliblefiend
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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 5:56pm
"In Alaska, wolves are considered vermin."
I lived in AK for a few years. I never knew anyone to say that. In what sense are they vermin? Yes, they compete with humans for certain things. Why ought they not? The "they're vermin" argument is very different from the "fix the predator-prey" cycle argument.
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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Wed, 09-17-2008 - 6:09pm

" I was raised on deer meat."
Me too. While I no longer hunt, we grew up eating deer, rabbit, squirrel, duck, ptarmigan, moose, and many kinds of fish. My dad and brothers are still big hunters. My dad used to be on the Ft. Knox pistol team, and my mom and dad were paired skeet champions in Germany.

I remember kids at school were extremely envious of my lunches which were either smoked salmon, smoked moose summer sausage with a big slab of velveeta, or fried rabbit legs, or something like that.

I'm not sure what to think about the wolf thing. There is a natural predator-prey cycle. I'm not sure how I feel about mucking with it. The population of AK has almost doubled since I lived there (and still less than 1 million). I wonder how many are hunters. I wonder how many moose / caribou are killed by Alaskans vs tourists. There may be stats online somewhere.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-30-2004
Thu, 09-18-2008 - 11:25am

"Most hunting rifles (at least most of the ones I saw growing up) are semi-auto or bolt action. Most hunting shotguns, for example, are semi-automatic (although my old .410 was a single shot). "


See, now I think you get to my definition of sport.

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Avatar for thefalliblefiend
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-08-2003
Thu, 09-18-2008 - 12:35pm

"I'd prefer black powder or, personally, a bow. "

My family does all of these. I suspect many hunters do. While the goal is usually to take the animal out with one shot, very often (perhaps most of the time) it wounds the animal - that could go off and die if it didn't get the second shot. Some do anyway. Casual 'hunting' is simple, but things get very complicated for the serious hunter. My dad bought a black powder kit, put the gun together, and etched the stock with intricate drawings. He also made his own powder horn from a cow's horn. He's quite artistic. He has also made several knives by buying the metal blanks, grinding them, attaching them to deer antlers (for handles). For his high powered rifles and pistols, he loads his own bullets. For the black powder rifle, he buys lead, melts it, and makes his own bullets. Were it possible, he would make the rifle from scratch - but I'm sure he would need a special (probably very expensive) tool to bore the barrel. He makes his own flies, lures, duck, goose, and turkey calls.

He's the kind of guy that he can go fishing with 30 people (he would never do that, but suppose he did)...he 'could' go fishing with 30 people, not a single person would catch a single fish, except one person, my dad, who would have caught his limit. Same thing for hunting.

In our family, hunting and fishing were a huge part of our life - I'm not sure we cared whether it was 'sporting' - it was fun, brought the family together, and filled the freezer with food for weeks (or months) in the case of a moose kill. (Moose he killed with his bolt action .30-06.)

But is the multi-shot sporting? When my dad used to hunt snowshoe hares in AK, he would bring them back with 1 hole in them. One eye would be missing and there would be a hole in the other side of the head. One shot, one kill. His brother is a better shot. But neither myself nor any of my brothers is so good. I'm way out of practice, but when I went to the range a few months back, I was the best shot there. (That's not unusual.) Since I suck pretty bad to begin with, it seems reasonable for me to think that most people are not likely to do the one-shot, one-kill. If we shot (with a .22) would almost certainly make a body shot, and might need another to keep the thing from running off and dying a long, slow death to no good end. We could, of course, use, say 6 shot, but that can result in a lot of inedible meat (and there isn't much on a squirrel to begin with, for example) or it can (as it often does) result in chipped teeth.

I think people who do not come from hunting families see reports on television of city boys doing stupid caged 'hunts' or a bunch of rednecks tormenting some wild critter or doing some disrespectful thing to a a dead one and they think, "Well, this is the way it is." For all I know there are a lot of hunters who do that sort of thing - but I was hunting for well over a decade before I left home and I never once witnessed any of those kinds of things. In our house it was simple - if you want to eat beans every night for the next month, stay home. If you'd like a bit of salmon or fried rabbit, then get your rod or your rifle and let's go do it.

Now all of this is quite beside the (political) point, as I do not think that hunting is protected by the 2nd amendment (my dad does and I'm guessing most gun advocates do), though I do think it could conceivably be protected by the 9th. I also don't think self-defense is protected by the 2nd amendment (although, again I suspect it should be covered under the 9th). That said, I do think the 2nd guarantees an *individual* right to bear arms, but only for the purpose of common defense. And I think the state(s) has the right to regulate this.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-25-2008
Thu, 09-18-2008 - 12:55pm

One of the questions is whether or not you're hunting for "sport".


If you're out there for the "thrill of the kill" (which I've never understood) then fine, use a bow, or a bolt-action rifle, or even go hunting with a stone-tipped spear.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-30-2004
Thu, 09-18-2008 - 1:19pm

Do you believe that the majority of Americans hunt because they HAVE to, or because they WANT to?

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iVillage Member
Registered: 08-25-2008
Thu, 09-18-2008 - 1:27pm
So I guess you're willing then to admit that there is a reason for semi-automatic weapons?
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
Thu, 09-18-2008 - 1:31pm
Just imagine the population problems that we would have with deer and other animals if there were no sport hunting.
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-30-2004
Thu, 09-18-2008 - 1:46pm

I never said I was against sport hunting.

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