Licence to kill?

As part of the task of untangling UK law from EU law it seems that MPs recently voted that animals cannot feel emotions or pain. I find it hard to see how they actually know this. Now, I am not a sentimental animal lover. My grandchildren will testify to that. They get quite cross when I will not say that I “love” Baxter the dog, even though I do concede that he is part of the family. Neither do they understand why I do not want to hold the oldest one’s lizard/dragon/reptile creature. However, Even I can recognise that animals have feelings and I would never do anything to hurt them.

Of course, such a ruling makes it feasible to reintroduce fox-hunting. And why not badger-baiting, even bear-bating and dog-fights while they are at it?

On the other side of the Atlantic, President Trump just signed a bill getting rid of Alaska’s ban on killing vulnerable bears, for example when they are hibernating! Wolf cubs in dens can also be killed! Somehow it smacks of a cowardly way of hunting, if hunt you must! 76.8 million acres of federally protected national preserves across Alaska are affected by this ruling. One of the people in favour of the new ruling argued that the previous rule, that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued in August, was “bad for Alaska, bad for hunters, bad for our native peoples, bad for America” and a “direct attack on states’ rights.” Oh boy, I can see that someone might argue that Alaskans “value hunting as a deep part of their culture” but how does protecting animals turnout to be “bad for America”? 

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the USA, in Wisconsin, they have just reduced the age at which a child can hunt and kill animals. Previously they had to be ten years but how children as young as six can shoot to kill, presumably under supervision. Here’s a link to the story of one little girl who shot a deer.

I bet she doesn’t understand the story of Bambi at all. She won’t be crying because his mother gets shot!

I notice that her father bought her a special light-weight rifle. Was it pink, I ask myself!

Get them started on gun use when they are small appears to be the philosophy. But then, I hear that fox-hunting enthusiasts have the same idea about introducing their offspring to the sport when they are young.

It’s a different way of looking at the world!