Birdman
07-14-2004, 03:06 PM
At the 2004 Annual Meetings & Exhibits in Pittsburgh we announced an exciting new hunting program: Free Hunters. It is a program of hunter rights and hunter opportunity designed to reverse the slide in hunter numbers, protect their rights, and find many more places to hunt. There will be a serious new member benefit program, including communication specifically aimed at hunters’ rights and places to hunt. Free Hunters harkens back to the day when hunters were actually free to hunt—free from overly complex red tape, rules, and regulations—and to a day when lands were open and free to access by hunters.
NRA will consolidate and strengthen American hunters’ political power through visible advocacy to preserve hunting, expand seasons, open lands, and celebrate the heritage of hunting. Hunters are leaving the field. If hunting is to survive this exodus must stop. NRA has more hunters than any organization, and it must act to save hunting.
NRA members have been very successful in protecting rights and securing fair treatment in the U.S. Congress and the legislatures. We fully expect that state legislatures will want to enact laws to protect hunters’ rights. It seems obvious that 16 million hunters should have a fair and reasonable share of public monies for shooting and hunting lands. After all, shooting places and hunting lands offer both economic development and recreation. I suspect we are as deserving as botanical gardens, bike trails, and art centers.
I am hopeful that fish and game agencies will agree that it’s time to get the mountains of red tape under control and that extremely complicated licensing procedures, discrimination against the most vulnerable of hunters, and confusing arrest traps that ensnare people who are trying to follow the rules all serve to frustrate and drive out hunters.
We think most agencies will agree that intrusive, hostile tactics directed against the vast numbers of law-abiding hunters, in the vain hope of sifting out a couple of violators, is very offensive and that the gradual “elitizing” of hunting—where each year the bottom group of most vulnerable hunters is stripped off and driven out—is a suicidal practice. NRA is not going to stand by idle while 10 million active gun owner/hunters are ripped from our family, plucked right out of the heart of gun owner strength.
Hunting should be fun and enjoyable. It is not performing brain surgery or shoveling manure in a hog lot—it doesn’t need to be a maze of lawyerly complexity or drudgery. If it becomes too complicated, the reason is the misuse of government.
No hunter in the field should ever have the slightest concern that at any moment he or she may get a citation or be arrested for some mysterious rule that he or she accidentally missed. It should be just like when we drive down the street of our town. We never have any concern that the police are going to stop and arrest us for robbery, burglary, car theft, or arson simply because we forgot to do something.
NRA, with our huge hunter membership, can and will use our strength to protect hunters’ rights. We will never be an agency booster club, but we would love to have game agencies as hunters’ friends: if they use our dollars to produce more hunting lands, get rid of red tape, purge the slightest whiff of harassment of law-abiding hunters; if they scrupulously respect the rights of hunters, including the most vulnerable hunters; and if, when rules are made and laws recommended, equal consideration is given to the impact of those regulations on vulnerable hunters. Then those agencies will have our support and thanks.
If they do the opposite, particularly if they participate, in any way, in the suicidal spiral of “elitizing” hunting—where the guy who works at the gas station is slowly forced out by every year’s new crop of red tape and complexity—or if they close shooting and hunting lands, then we will not be friends.
NRA will consolidate and strengthen American hunters’ political power through visible advocacy to preserve hunting, expand seasons, open lands, and celebrate the heritage of hunting. Hunters are leaving the field. If hunting is to survive this exodus must stop. NRA has more hunters than any organization, and it must act to save hunting.
NRA members have been very successful in protecting rights and securing fair treatment in the U.S. Congress and the legislatures. We fully expect that state legislatures will want to enact laws to protect hunters’ rights. It seems obvious that 16 million hunters should have a fair and reasonable share of public monies for shooting and hunting lands. After all, shooting places and hunting lands offer both economic development and recreation. I suspect we are as deserving as botanical gardens, bike trails, and art centers.
I am hopeful that fish and game agencies will agree that it’s time to get the mountains of red tape under control and that extremely complicated licensing procedures, discrimination against the most vulnerable of hunters, and confusing arrest traps that ensnare people who are trying to follow the rules all serve to frustrate and drive out hunters.
We think most agencies will agree that intrusive, hostile tactics directed against the vast numbers of law-abiding hunters, in the vain hope of sifting out a couple of violators, is very offensive and that the gradual “elitizing” of hunting—where each year the bottom group of most vulnerable hunters is stripped off and driven out—is a suicidal practice. NRA is not going to stand by idle while 10 million active gun owner/hunters are ripped from our family, plucked right out of the heart of gun owner strength.
Hunting should be fun and enjoyable. It is not performing brain surgery or shoveling manure in a hog lot—it doesn’t need to be a maze of lawyerly complexity or drudgery. If it becomes too complicated, the reason is the misuse of government.
No hunter in the field should ever have the slightest concern that at any moment he or she may get a citation or be arrested for some mysterious rule that he or she accidentally missed. It should be just like when we drive down the street of our town. We never have any concern that the police are going to stop and arrest us for robbery, burglary, car theft, or arson simply because we forgot to do something.
NRA, with our huge hunter membership, can and will use our strength to protect hunters’ rights. We will never be an agency booster club, but we would love to have game agencies as hunters’ friends: if they use our dollars to produce more hunting lands, get rid of red tape, purge the slightest whiff of harassment of law-abiding hunters; if they scrupulously respect the rights of hunters, including the most vulnerable hunters; and if, when rules are made and laws recommended, equal consideration is given to the impact of those regulations on vulnerable hunters. Then those agencies will have our support and thanks.
If they do the opposite, particularly if they participate, in any way, in the suicidal spiral of “elitizing” hunting—where the guy who works at the gas station is slowly forced out by every year’s new crop of red tape and complexity—or if they close shooting and hunting lands, then we will not be friends.