Texas Lawmaker Wants To Let the Blind Hunt

IHC Navistar writes with a story from Reuters Oddly Enough. A Texas lawmaker has introduced a measure that would allow blind people to hunt any game that sighted people can currently pursue. The article notes that the bill may have clear sailing in the hunting-besotted state of Texas. An education outreach person from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department explained it this way: "A blind person can shoot a rifle by mounting an offset pistol scope on the side of the rifle instead of on top. This allows their companion behind them to peer over their shoulder and help them sight it, but the blind person can pull the trigger."

Comments

It's Funny - Laugh

[stoolpigeon]

You think this is funny? I've got some incredible stories for you then. Get this. The other day - I'm in the grocery store and there is this guy walking around with a dog! In the store! Really, no kidding. A dog in the store and this guy is holding onto a harness the dog was wearing and the dog was leading the guy around. Can you believe it? Somebody should write up a funny post about dogs who shop for humans. That's a knee slapper.
 
But that's not the funniest. A week before that I saw this lady out on the sidewalk waving this big white stick all over the place. Talk about from the "don't hit me dept.", she was wacking all kinds of stuff with that stick. Hide the kids! Oh man, I still laugh until I get tears in my eyes over this one.
 
Last year my brother took a friend of ours with ALS on the last deer hunt of his life. My brother did everything for this guy but pull the trigger. Took a lot of time to rig things up to make that possible. And someone who is unfortunate enough to be blind should be able to go hunting with some assistance. The only reason anyone would find this funny is if they are willing to completely ignore what the hunting entails and just laugh at another's misfortune. Maybe I'm wrong to be bothered by this - but I think it is sad that I'm seeing it in so many places being presented as a humorous story.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[bobschneider8]

I don't think what people are making fun of here are blind people. What they're making fun of is Texas lawmakers who are so extreme on "gun rights" that they're willing to legalize such an obviously dangerous and stupid idea. You don't see them letting blind people get drivers licenses, but with guns, it's OK. I don't have a problem with what your brother did for his friend, but there are folks out there who seem to think there should be no regulations on guns, period. The only rational response to such people is to make fun of them, which they make very easy to do.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[prichardson]

Grocery shopping and walking down the sidewalk are required for participation in society. Hunting is not. Also, the set of circumstances where a blind person shopping could result in someone getting seriously injured are a lot harder to believe than for a blind hunter.

We don't allow blind people to drive cars, either, but no one thinks this is prejudiced or an erosion of human rights.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[stoolpigeon]

this isn't dangerous. i would love to see stats on hunting accidents and blind hunters. this has been legal in many places for a long time. the people who are dangerous when it comes to hunting are the people who are stupid. whether or not someone can see is no indication of their intelligence.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[Astral Jung]

Maybe I'm wrong to be bothered by this - but I think it is sad that I'm seeing it in so many places being presented as a humorous story. I would posit that if you can't see the humor in legislation allowing blind people to shoot potentially lethal firearms, that you have become too sensitive to the issue for your own good.

I know for a fact that my friend who is wheelchair bound would laugh his ass off if he heard, for example, that the Olympics would allow people like him to compete by, say, strapping a wheelchair to a legged individual. For him and for me, part of the way we deal with the challenges he faces is by the ability to see the humor that presents itself.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[rhombic]

Not making fun of anyone-- I grew up around firearms, and hunting is a way of life in much of the country, esp. where I come from. Not my personal choice, but I have no issue w/ it. The one thing that was drilled into my head, over and over and over again, is that when you pull the trigger of a firearm, you are personally responsible for whatever happens. You are personally and individually responsible for examining everything between you and the target, and everything you can see downrange of the target, to make sure that if you choose to pull that trigger, you are not going to hit anything you didn't mean to hit. Being told by someone else, "nope, nothing downrange, fire away" DOES NOT CUT IT. And I'm sorry for anyone who wants to hunt but can't, but if you can't see downrange, there is no way you should ever pull that trigger. What if what your buddy thinks is an old tree behind your target and a little to the left, is actually another hunter. And then you shoot, and miss high and to the left, and punch a hole in the guy's chest. Are you gonna feel o.k. for the rest of your life knowing that it's really your buddy's fault, he should have seen it?

Nobody dies from walking around the store w/ a guide dog, or using a cane. When you pick up a firearm you're making life and death decisions for other people, and you have an ethical responsibility to personally know what that gun is pointed at.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[El Gigante de Justic]

While I'm not a hunter myself, I have to agree with this statement. While hunters certainly enjoy hunting (otherwise, why bother), most people out there aren't just shooting animals for the heck of it. It isn't like the slaughter of American Bison during the expansion into the West, which truly was senseless. Most stores don't carry venison, so if you want to eat it, your best option is to hunt deer, or find a friend that does so. Sure, if someone snags a big buck, they're probably going to mount the head or rack or something, but they're also going to eat the meat, and possibly find a use for the deerskin, etc. If they don't use it themselves, there is likely to be a buyer. There may be a few bad apples out there who really are just out to shoot stuff and get drunk, but if we're lucky the getting drunk part means they most shoot themselves.

Also, in many areas, certain animals are overpopulated, mostly because their natural predators were hunted out long ago. For example, while whitetail deer were once very low in population about 75 years ago, conservation efforts have brought their numbers way up. In Wisconsin there are estimated to be 1.4-1.5 million deer. While wolves have been reintroduced to Wisconsin in recent years, they are still considered threatened, and their numbers aren't quite high enough to manage the deer herd on their own. We have also had problems with CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease - similar to Mad Cow disease) appearing in the local deer population, so the hunt allows the DNR to see where it is, where it is spreading too, and if necessary, order additional hunts to cull the herd in areas where it is rampant to prevent further spread.
    Without the hunt, the deer population could eventually get large enough where they are starving themselves or damaging crops or causing more auto accidents.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[stoolpigeon]

My father's family hunted to put food on the table. Fished for the same reason as well. I am willing to wager you could find some people in the U.S. still living in that manner. A small group - but this isn't something that disappeared 200 years ago.
 
Hunting is not a small part of wildlife management on 2 fronts. The first is population control. If hunting did not have an impact on population, there would be no need for limits. The second is money. Outdoor sports generate millions of dollars for wildlife management.
 
As far as it being pleasurable. As a favorite author of mine once pointed out - some surgeons like the cutting and the blood. I don't care as long as they are good at what they do. Hunting provides a strong connection with nature. The hunters I know are much more concerned about the environment than the people who never leave the confines of civilization. My family will not starve if I don't go out and shoot game, at the same time, I've always eaten whatever I've killed. So it may not be necessary, but that doesn't mean it isn't beneficial activity on many levels. And this does not instill in me any desire to harm humans.

Re:It's Funny - Laugh

[rhombic]

A blind person can absolutely do that by having someone assist them is sighting the gun.

I completely disagree. Unless you can see the target, the range, and downrange yourself, you cannot be sure of your target. The way I was taught, that means you don't take the shot. Having someone else tell you "range is clear, fire away" is NOT a substitute.

Choosing to pull that trigger means you are personally responsible for whatever happens after. If your assistant screws up and misses some kid screwing around in the woods downrange and you plug the kid, you're still going to have to deal with the guilt of that the rest of your life.

Yes, I grew up around firearms and hunting. Still like to shoot, not much of a hunter anymore but 100% support those who choose to hunt. When I was a kid, a friend of our family ( a hunter himself) was mistaken for a deer and died one season in the woods. The person who shot him was an experienced hunter, and a perfectly nice person, who made a one second lapse in judgment about his target and had to live the rest of his life knowing he killed my friend's father. If you're blind, are you really going to let someone else judge your target for you? If so, you better be prepared for the consequences.

Legally Blind

[Jonsey]

I've got a good friend who's rapidly becoming a gun-nut... odd for a Canadan, I guess the states are finally seeping in to him.

Anyway, he's legally blind, just invested a very nice new car's worth of money into a Guide Dog, and has better groupings than most of the first-time shooters I've yet met.

This might be a problem for the totally blind, but there are a lot of folks considered blind by the state who are perfectly capable at IDing a target, and moving lead down-range in a manner at least as safe as a sighted person. Probably more-so when you consider the extra carefulness that the average legally blind person puts into doubting their visual input.

Of course, there could be problems, but one thing I've found is most people aren't total dumb-asses. If you're unable to hunt safely, you probably won't actually want to hunt.

(This isn't to discount the hijinks that ensue when you show up to an open range with a nice rifle, nice optics, and a guide dog in tow. That's a `priceless` moment that I hope to see again often in my life)

Why hunt?

[jfengel]

Among hunters, hunting is a lot more than pulling a trigger and killing something. It's more about the very primal action of pursuing an animal for food. (Most hunters I know do in fact eat what they kill). It takes a lot of skill, and years to learn: where and when the animals gather, how to sit quietly and patiently, how to observe. All of those are skills you once had to develop if you wanted to eat.

The ultimate kill with a rifle is only the very end of the process. It's kinder than the older methods, such as a bow and arrow, which often wound an animal without killing it, and you have to track it to put it out of its misery. A rifle can drop an animal immediately.

If you eat meat, you can hardly claim that having somebody else kill your dinner puts you on a higher moral plane, especially if you've seen the way animals are treated in our factory-farms. Hunting puts you directly in touch with what you're eating, guts and blood and all.

So it sounds silly at first blush, but the blind can be active participants in a hunt. They still have ears and even noses; they can still be outside; they still eat what they kill; they still have the camaraderie of a hunting party. If the technology lets them participate even more fully in the process, why not?

There are, by the way, an awful lot of hunters who hunt for other reasons. Some will use a lot of high-tech to make it practically shooting fish in a barrel; they seem to care more about the kill than the hunt. I know they exist, but that does not describe most hunters in my experience.

I myself do not hunt, but I limit my animal products when I can to ones I believed were raised and slaughtered humanely.

Re:Why hunt?

[lawpoop]

">> it's about understanding a human's place in the ecosystem and coming to terms with our natural history

why can't you think about that without blowing some beautiful wild animals brains out?"

You can think about it all you want, but until you actually do it and take responsibility for it, it's just an abstraction with no reality. You are alienated from it. Like raising a child or traveling overseas -- you can theorize all you want, but there's no reality to it until you jump into it. You're just engaging in fantasy. It's like saying you feel sorry for poor people but you don't actually give to charity or try to help people out. It's all in your mind, no reality.

">> Certainly there are some people who are bloodthirsty, but that doesn't mean that everyone who hunts is.

Of course it does. Anyone with half a brain and who isn't bloodthirsty would prefer the continuation of natural beauty from the animal continuing to live. Or do you find a field full of corpses attractive?"

You do realize that prey animals need to be hunted in order to be healthy, right? Prey animals produce more offspring than the environment can support. It's natural selection.

Here in Ohio, there are so many deer, feeding off corn in the summer, and then there are too many and they slowly starve to death in the winter. We have taken away their natural predators such as wolves and mountain lions, so now it is more important than ever that we hunt them. In the case where there are not enough deer taken by hunters, the Ohio Dept. of Natural Resources has to go out and kill enough so that they don't totally strip bark off of trees in their desperate search for food. In fact, about five years ago, we had a deer overpopulation in Sharon woods park here in Columbus. The department of parks had to shoot female deer with birth control so they wouldn't destroy the park. Most rural counties can't afford the expensive deer birth control and can't tag every female deer in the county, so hunting has to happen.

Your field full of corpses is strawman is disgusting. I'm taking about hunting and eating. In many parts of the country, hunting makes up a large part of a family's food throughout the year. They take a few deer, put them in the freezer, and eat from it all year long. If they had to give up hunting and buy their meat from a store, they wouldn't be able to afford it. The fact that you can't separate a horror-movie psychopath from a responsible hunter shows how closed-minded you are. Your sick fantasies of rotting corpses shows how little you know and how disconnected you are from the reality of hunting.

"I am taking more responsibility, by ensuring the animal get killed by professionals in a regulated humane way."

What exactly do you do to take more responsibility other than just buy meat? You are aware of the outright torture that goes on in factory farming, I would assume? Do you buy free range meat?

Re:i can imagine...

[AuMatar]

Most things they want to do don't put other people at risk of dieing. A gun is a dangerous machine, and a blind person is incapable of using it properly. He could easily kill someone with it. This idea is inane.

No

[Lord_Dweomer]

Please don't think of this post as being heartless. I fully sympathize with people who have been robbed of their sight...but I'm sorry...there are just some things that your handicap prevents you from doing, and being out in the woods, where other people could be, pulling the trigger on a gun that you aren't aiming is NOT acceptable.

Lets say they accidentally shot someone somehow...who is liable? The person who told the blind person to fire or the blind person for pulling the trigger?

I'm sorry if I sound like a dick, but life isn't fair. Being blind means that hunting (as well as driving and a whole host of other things) is just one of those things that you are not going to be able to do.

I'd be really curious as to what their motivation is as well...I mean, not trying to judge...but isn't the point of hunting the skill involved in tracking and bagging your kill? If someone else is doing all of that for you, really the only thing you're doing is pulling a trigger that kills an animal. I'd go so far as to say that the blind person would really just be doing the easy wrap-up of someone elses kill.

But this brings up another point...if all they're doing is pulling the trigger since they can't sight targets...why not just let them loose in a room with some ambient forest noises, some animal noise sound board (complete with death sounds) and a fan or 2 to simulate wind and let them loose with a gun loaded with blanks?

Re:i can imagine...

[jasonla]

Hyperbolize at your leisure. No one is implying blind people should be barred from all activities like you suggest. It is common sense, however, that we limit blind people from activities where they have a clear handicap and there is significant potential for them to injure themselves and other people. Do we allow blind people to drive unsupervised?

Re:i can imagine...

[ottothecow]

I hardly see how the blind should be allowed to own and operate a firearm. They are 100% incapable of safely using it on their own. They arent allowed to drive for the same reason. Sure they could operate the pedals and even steer if they have someone telling them exactly where to aim the car and when to push but that doesnt make any sense--it just sounds idiotic.

I know there are blind people who have gone so far as to pass a marksmanship test but that still doesnt give me much of a sense of security (with enough practice, anyone can hit a stationary target with thier eyes closed). I would like to see more of a real world shooting test...two targets, one friendly one enemy, moving back and forth with random motion. It doesnt have to be difficult or high speed, just moving and random with both good and bad targets. Firearms should only be allowed to those who can distinguish between foes and friends and can hit something that has the ability to move. I'm sorry but blind people just cant do this reliably enough that they should be trusted with using deadly force. There are plenty of activities that they can participate in that dont involve deadly weapons and really, how much fun is hunting going to be if someone else is essentially aiming for you and telling you when to pull the trigger. You might as well let them pull the trigger and just come along for the ride.

Re:i can imagine...

[jcarkeys]

They arent allowed to drive for the same reason.

If the blind aren't allowed to drive, why is there Braille on drive-through ATM's?