Yes, the Second Amendment is also about duck hunting
May 15, 2008

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

Sure! I know what the bumper sticker says: “The Second Amendment Isn’t About Duck Hunting.” But hunting of all game—from little pests and varmints to record-book big game—is more relevant to the Second Amendment than many people may appreciate.

Hunting is just one of the many individual legal purposes for which firearms possession and use are guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution—and the constitutions of most of the individual states.

But that’s not the only reason it has a special connection to the right to keep and bear arms.

Perhaps the confusion has arisen because of the chicanery of anti-gun politicians like former Vice President Al Gore and Sens. John Kerry, Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Whenever they have a chance to vote on infringing every law-abiding individual’s right to keep and bear arms, they vote against the people. Then, when they are on the campaign stump or challenged by someone in the public, they profess to support the Second Amendment. Almost invariably, they equate it with hunting and completely ignore mention of all the other legal reason why people would want or need to own firearms. Significantly absent from their professions of support for an individual right to keep and bear arms is any mention whatever of the right to defense of persons and property, or as a safeguard against tyranny.

Hunting Disguises
To further stress their limited support for the Second Amendment they don hunting clothes and get themselves photographed and filmed with a shotgun in hand as they engage in a show of duck, grouse or pheasant hunting. What is sometimes puzzling is that they even convince some of their true Second Amendment voting friends to join them in these charades designed to flimflam the voters.

I don’t know when the above-mentioned bumper sticker slogan first appeared, but it wasn’t during the ill-fated presidential campaigns of Gore and Kerry. I think it predates those campaigns, perhaps to the time when another famous anti-gunner then in the White House, President Bill Clinton was photographed duck hunting on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. As I recall, the media claimed that he had actually fired a gun and downed one duck.

If anyone should have known better, it was Bill Clinton. He is too savvy a politician not to have remembered the paraphrase of Abraham Lincoln’s words about not “fooling all the people all of the time.” I don‘t recall whether he went duck hunting before or after getting trounced in the 1994 congressional elections. He did confirm that his party’s loss of control of Congress for the first time in 40 years was directly related to the passage of the Brady Act and his “assault weapons” ban.

The Clintons, as well as Kerry, Gore, Obama and Schumer, understand the importance of the gun issue with so many voters in many key states. So do the policy wonk Democrats—candidates or their staffers and advisers—who push gun control bills to satisfy their core constituency and major funding sources.

Their plan has always been to hoodwink the general electorate into believing that their candidates are not anti-gun. This sleight of hand involves support for the lowest common denominator of the public’s appreciation of lawful gun use: hunting.

Even non-hunters understanding sport hunting, mostly because they have friends, family, co-workers or neighbors who hunt something. They also have friends who shoot recreationally but do not hunt. Finally, many non-hunters also understand the concept of the right to keep and bear arms for personal and property defense.

Recent polls show that while a slight majority of the American public might approve of “reasonable restrictions” on some guns or gun ownership, an even larger majority opposes a ban on handguns and any ban on most commonly owned firearms. This has to be linked to their belief in the right to survive, which has been focused by terrorist acts and concerns generated by the state of the economy and society in general.

The problem is that many people—non-hunters, hunters and even other gunowners—who believe that some restrictions are reasonable—don’t know as much as they should about the different kinds of guns and their legal uses by millions of other law-abiding Americans.

Pejorative Terms
That is why terms like “assault weapons,” “Saturday night specials,” “plastic guns,” “cop-killer guns,” “sniper rifles,” “illegal guns” and so forth are purposely used to foster legislative agendas by the anti-gunners. These are non-specific terms with pejorative connotations. They can confuse even gunowners. For example, some farmer-hunters I have met who own old Model 12 shotguns don’t realize that many versions of so-called assault weapons legislation would ban the Model 12 as an “assault weapon.” Similarly, I have met people who didn’t understand that their own prized Smith & Wesson Chiefs Special would have been outlawed by some “Saturday night special” proposals that they had supported.

It is not so surprising that people are confused and misled given the intentional manipulation of the press and the easy use of such terms by a journalism community that really doesn’t want learn any more than they have to for a specific story. That is why ABC’s moderators for the recent Clinton-Obama debate in Harrisburg, PA, failed to ask really significant questions about the Heller case or about other Second Amendment issues.

Firearms civil rights defenders need to understand that misinformation, disinformation and their shrinking ranks are critical to the continuing battle for our Second Amendment rights as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. They also have to understand, as the anti-gunners do, that the size of any voting block is important.

Part of our common political problem is the dwindling number of duck and other species hunters. Most people who hunt, or have hunted, understand some basics of the right to keep and bear arms. These are the people the politicians are trying to hoodwink.

But the fact that these numbers are dwindling—for a lot of reasons I won’t pursue here—is a critical factor in the continuing struggle to preserve the Second Amendment as we know it. And if those hunter numbers are allowed to sink even further, the effect on future elections may be disastrous.

This is the main reason why hunters should encourage newcomers to their sport. This is also why gun rights activists need to support programs that make it easier for young people to experience hunting, whether with their dads or mothers, granddads and grandmas, uncles or aunts, or other mentors. In addition, we should also make every effort to get former hunters back into the game.

Varied Benefits
With more hunters afield each year we would be helping to support sounder conservation as well as healthier lifestyles than couch potato-ing and video-gaming—as well as exercising our Second Amendment rights. And with more young people becoming hunters we would help to insure future generations of Second Amendment supporters.

This is one of the reasons hunting, conservation and other sport shooting organizations like the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the National Wild Turkey Federation and many others organizations have been promoting amendments to hunting laws that make it easier for younger children to learn about and experience hunting.

The Second Amendment is not just about duck hunting, but it certainly is about all legal hunting as well as other legitimate uses of firearms. And the more people who engage in sport hunting, the more likely their will continue to be active defenders of the Second Amendment in the future.

The Second Amendment isn’t just about hunting, but it is about hunters.
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