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Is
shooting clay targets "hunting?"
Every bit as much as shooting pen-raised
birds. In
essence, they are the same thing: expressions of a
genetic survival disposition reduced now, because of
our success, to ritual.
You’ve seen those National Geographic
specials—the ones about Amazon tribes that used to
war back and forth all the time, with the winners
eating the losers, but now just paint themselves up
and get drunk and shake sticks at each other?
This
is the same sort of thing.
Pretend. Ritual.
(I
have a clay thrower permanently rigged up in my back
yard and every chance I get, I shoot pheasants at
Primland, a premier 12,000 acre resort here in
Meadows of Dan. And,
yes, lots of Democrats do own guns--gasp!--and do
know the business end of them.)
So,
here comes another ritual, a court case over in
Nelson
County
that will have some national implications for the
right-to-hunt crowd, and for anti-gun, anti-hunting,
more-government-is-the- answer-to-everything
snivelers everywhere.
Orion
Estates, which sounds like a small version of
Primland, wants a conditional use zoning permit for
the construction of a shotgun sports center.
Let me interpret "shotgun sports
center" for you.
They want to shoot tens of thousands of
rounds of lead shot loads at clay targets thrown by
a spring-operated mechanical device.
I have a "shotgun sports center"
set up in my back yard.
The governmental brain trust of
Nelson
County
says “nothing doing.”
Most
days, that would be the end of it.
But there is a complication here, a thing
called the Virginia Constitution, and an amendment
thereto approved by the people of this good state in
2000. That
amendment says the people have a right to "hunt,"
to harvest game and fish and whatnot, subject to the
rules adopted by the General Assembly.
Sure,
you can drive a truck through that kind of language,
but it’s there, right in the constitution now.
And Orion Estates is saying… Well,
they’re saying two things:
The Nelson County Board of Supervisors is
violating the constitutional right to hunt that the
state constitution guarantees its members and
guests; and they’re saying that throwing loads of
hot lead shot at these clay targets is "hunting."
I
don’t know that either side has gotten good and
drunk yet—I’d recommend it—but it does look
like they’ve put their war paint on and are
shrieking and hollering and shaking sticks at each
other. Nelson
County Circuit Judge Michael Gamble has sallied
forth to give the Orion operation a look-see.
He’ll decide if that "shotgun sports
center" engages in "hunting," in a
ruling expected later in the summer, circuit court
judges being, of course, a cross of sorts, our
equivalents to the Amazonians’ wise men,
soothsayers, and witch doctors.
In
the meantime, both sides of this issue are mustering
up cousin tribes from all over the country.
One way or another, it seems, Virginia’s
so-called "constitutional right" to hunt
and fish is going to be challenged.
Judge Gamble’s ruling likely won’t be the
end of it, either way.
These cousin tribes are bringing their
pocketbooks to this scuffle.
What are the implications of that?
There are two:
Court of Appeals, Supreme Court.
Holdover
genetics, survival instincts that date to our
origins as a species, do that—they cause all kinds
of trouble, long after we’ve evolved beyond the
material need for them.
Make no mistake, they’re still there.
We all have them.
Their vestiges are everywhere.
(See "divorce courts" and
"women fist-fighting at
day-after-Thanksgiving-Day-sales"). But the
Amazonians are clearly on to something, it seems to
me. Ritual is
best. Getting
drunk and shaking sticks at each other is the way to
go.
-- May 9, 2005
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