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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."
It's not that big of a surprise. With Chuck Norris prowling the area, they figure that everyone has a right to take their chances.
Look on the bright side. They'll never see it coming! (The roundhouse kick to the face, that is...)
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the number of incidents of people getting 'peppered' around the face will totally increase.
bravo, guys.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
How fitting.
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Dear on-duy editor:
Um, yes?
Shit. I can't think of any funny Dick Cheney jokes.
...blind Texans does it take to shoot out a light bulb?
(sorry, it's the best joke I could think of)
mandelbr0t
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Does the law contain a "You killed it, you clean it!" provision?
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
What could possibly go wrong?
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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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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)
I assert that my comment is only my opinion, not that of any employer, past, present or future.
Did I hit anything?
"Piter, too, is dead."
I am a Texan, and I seriously do object to the characterization of my state as "hunting-besotted". Note: this post is not intended to be humorous. I am aware that most (at least I hope) people will recognize this characterization as hyperbole, but from many other things that I have read and heard, there remain a significant number of people who will not. Therefore, while I am certainly not demanding that nobody ever say this about Texas, I do wish to speak up and be heard when I assert that this is, in fact, hyperbole. Hyperbole has its place in satire and parody (and other forms of mockery), but it should be countered (as opposed to censored or removed) unless it is known that everyone recognizes it as satire and parody. Texas is not "hunting-besotted".
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
... but I don't see the logic of it.
I fail to see why a blind person shouldn't be able to hunt when they've got a non-blind person looking through the sights for them. Many of you that don't come from big hunting areas won't understand why a blind person would want to go hunting, but those of us in hunting states (WI here) know that hunting is more about family and friends than just shooting an animal. I don't hunt myself, but if I did, I wouldn't care if there were blind hunters out there observing proper safety techniques. No hunter should shoot without knowing what they're aiming at, and a blind hunter is no exception.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I think it was Gallagher who was talking about this years ago, and he said, "when you're walking through the forest, how do you make a sound that's NOT like a rabbit?"
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Meanwhile, bills are being introduced that will allow middle-school drop-outs to teach high school as long as they are paired with someone with a teaching degree telling them what to say, allow 5-year-olds to drive cars as long as they have an adult to work the pedals for them, and formally entitle idiots to run for governor (and then president) as long as they "surround themselves with the right people".
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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.
Hunters blind you!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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?
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The damn Mule deer population is really bad there and a night drive on a back road is quite an experience trying to avoid herds of 10 to 50 every few miles. Texas rats.
Why is this article tagged with "texas, cheney, dick cheney?" May I please moderate the tags?
I know a guy who got one of the few available legal permits for grizzly bears with the intent of taking on an Alaskan grizzly bear with a sword...
I really don't think this reduces the dependence of a blind person on sighted persons-- just the opposite. Hunting like this raises the dependence of the blind person to the highest level possible. It makes the blind person, 100%, submit to the judgment of their sighted assistant on whether or not pulling the trigger at a particular moment is safe. If the sighted assistant screws up, the blind person will have to live the rest of their lives knowing they accidentally killed another person. That's the kind of power over me I would never want to give to another person, regardless of how much I trusted them.
I grew up around firearms & hunting, still enjoy shooting when I can. But if, God forbid, I ever became blind, I would never pull a trigger again in my life. If I'm blind, I can't possibly be sure of my target & range, and so I cannot ethically take a shot. But if somebody wants to give that power to another person, they'd better be prepared to deal with the consequences.
1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual.
blind people. with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads!
and was there enough left of him to have a funeral??
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You don't appear to understand that "blind" is frequently not absolute. Legally blind people can frequently still see, just not well. There is nothing intrinsically unsafe about legally blind people hunting, especially with a companion along to help with distances.
I suspect that you don't have much experience with firearms. While someone could, potentially, hit a target while blindfolded, it's much more difficult than it looks. Any theoretical totally blind person who manages to pass a marksmanship test is more a statistical anomaly than an example of "enough practice."
Oh, and in a more general response: Why does everyone have such a negative knee-jerk reaction toward hunting? I can understand the perceptions of TX, having lived there for a year, but hunting isn't limited to drunken, illiterate hillbillies.
Speaking of asinine, Hi, Pot. Ever RTFA? Try it, you might become more educated than us kettles in Texas.
Just for fun, let's look at a couple of possible results of this proposal, not that you would learn anything or see the point.
In one case, the blind has an offset sight for someone else to sight the weapon. So, there would be TWO people trying to sneak through the environment to find game, making it more difficult to actually find the game. Once found, the sighted person would ensure the target is game and not another hunter.
In another case, laser sighting is allowed. This enables those who can barely see, (but are still legally blind,) to sight and shoot. The legally blind person would still need to be able to see good enough out of at least a portion of his field of vision to discern that the laser is hitting the target.
To put legally blind in perspective, I had a roomate who was legally blind. Most of his retina was detached in one eye, and he couldn't really focus the other. Consequently, he had a spot of clear vision, and a large area of really blurry vision. He could play video games if he looked at the TV just right from a close distance. Reading was a chore. Driving wasn't going to happen in a safe manner. On one night out, he made a pass at a cross dresser, not noticing the five-o'clock shadow. Would I trust him to hunt alone? No. Would I trust him to hunt with someone else sighting? Yes. Do I think he would get any game? Not really. Would he enjoy it? Probably. Would he take an unsafe shot? No, he knew his limitations, and I would expect the blind hunters in this case to know their limitations as well.
Your position is a bit hard to support unless you also oppose eating meat in general.
As long as the animal being shot (even recreationally) is eaten, then it represnts one less animal that lives its life in an unnatural and often vigorously inhumane environment, only to meet a very, very stressful and quite occasionally painful end.
On the balance, the deer that lived free and was shot had a *far* better quality of life -- and, yes, quality of death -- than 99% of the animals that you find laid out nice and neat in your grocery store. Eating a hunted wild deer is going to reduce demand for the drugged-up, tortured cattle you can buy at the store, which is a clear net win for animal suffering overall.
Now, killing a healthy non-nuisance creature and failing to eat it is, yes, morally repugnant -- and illegal in many parts of the US. But your comments elsewhere made it clear that you were referring to all sport hunting, even when the game is eaten.
Only in Texas would someone further this sillyness. Assuming that the hunting party can do so safely, it is really necessary in the first place? "Cool, I shot a deer, can't see it, but I killed the thing".
I say, the blind hunter should outfit himself with a knife, hide in the brush, and using his elevated sense of smell and hearing, try and kill game as a predator would. That would impress me.