OK, I think this is an incredibly stupid argument.
From the ethical perspective of anti-meat, hunting animals is so much better. They get to live natural lives, and they die in a similar manner to they do in nature (maybe a little faster, which is good).
From an environmental perspective, hunting keeps pray populations in naturally healthy levels, since most of their predators are driven out of populated areas, because people donât like to be attacked by wild animals. It also doesnât consume many resources, as theyâre just living their lives in nature.
I donât think thereâs any valid argument against hunting honestly, besides just being grossed out by it. Thatâs fine, and you can just not do it. Iâve never hunted in my life, and I suspect I never will. Itâs not really something I want to do. I canât construct a good argument against it though, and I suspect you canât either. If you can, give it a shot, and remember animals dying and being eaten is natural, and frequently necessary to maintain an equilibrium that was evolved to be maintained by external factors. Deer, for example, will die horrible deaths of starvation, and do damage to the environment, if they arenât hunted by humans.
Senal@programming.dev â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Crazy ape comment aside (iâd put it closer to apes with delusions of grandeur but thatâs just me), not shooting guns and allowing hunting arenât mutually exclusive.
Especially given all the hunting that happened pre-gun.
I donât know if itâs on purpose but your answer seems to be ignoring a lot of the realities of how the things you are proposing would work (or not work, as the case may be).
Cethin@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Sure, you can hunt without guns. I donât really see an argument for not using them though, as long as thereâs no lead. Whatâs really the ethical or environment argument in favor of only allowing bows, or whatever? I see the emotional appeal, if people have a negative view of guns. Not a logical appeal though, besides maybe making them harder to access to prevent deaths by firearms.
I didnât make any proposals in my above comment. I donât know what you mean by saying you donât see how they would work or not. I gave explanations of why hunting isnât negative, and is often positive, but not any proposals of how anything should be done. Would you care to elaborate?
graycloud@leminal.space â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Where I grew up, most people use a Have-a-Heart trap or a snare, then a knife or captive bolt gun (no bulltets).
GraniteM@lemmy.world â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
Scenario A: Youâre minding your own business, when a bullet passes through your heart/lungs and youâre dead in seconds.
Scenario B: You get caught in a trap and wait for hours for an ape with a knife or a bolt gun to come along and finish the job.
Honestly, if I were an animal, Iâd prefer Scenario A.
Cethin@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
That works. Iâm not saying you canât hunt with other methods. Iâm just saying that I canât see much of an argument against the use of leadless firearms for hunting, besides a weak gun control one (hunting weapons arenât a significant portion of the danger from firearms, mostly handguns or rifles like the AR-15). People can hunt however they want, or not at all, as long as it is controlled to healthy levels and doesnât cause any other issues, and, ideally doesnât cause unnecessary suffering to the animal.
Senal@programming.dev â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
In the isolated context of lead poisoning alone, sure, banning lead is an answer.
In the greater context of gun ownership in general, itâs more tricky.
But i wasnât advocating either , simply pointing out that banning guns and allowing hunting arenât mutually exclusive.
There are some , but i wasnât pushing for any so iâm not sure they are relevant here.
Either you havenât thought this all way through or you are intentionally ignoring the whole host of other emotional and logical arguments around gun control.
As was said previously, in this isolated context you are probably right, in any kind of wider context, not so much.
Thatâs possibly my bad, i meant more that you were making statements without any (written) consideration to the wider context in which they were made.
I donât necessarily disagree(or agree) with you, but i absolutely think your arguments need work.
Examples:
I will preface this by saying that my perspective on ânatureâ is that we are part of it, even will all the fucked up self destructive stuff we have going on , so itâs not like we can really do anything âunnaturalâ, i use the term natural below to mean nature if we didnât have such an outsized effect on natural processes.
Thatâs only true in an ecosystem where the predator (us) and the prey are in natural equilibrium, which Iâm sure youâll agree is absolutely not the case.
Without that natural equilibrium you need formal and enforced regulation to make this work.
This magical ânaturally healthyâ state of existence glosses over a lot of problems with that statement.
Also requires a natural equilibrium or regulation as a baseline.
Overhunting and ecosystem collapse, trophy hunting, selective hunting (think ivory), disease control, hunting for âsportâ (think fox âhuntingâ).
Those were just off the top of my head.
an equilibrium, not the only equilibrium, it also mentions evolution of equilibriums but is presented from a perspective that the equilibrium presented is now fixed (it is not).
we are also animals, so us dying and being eaten also fall under this, so by that rationale another effective solution could be to reintroduce more (non-human) predators and a few of us die here and there, but the animal populations now stay under control.
Until a new equilibrium is reached, because thatâs how ecosystems work (or collapse, depending).
Cethin@lemmy.zip â¨2⊠â¨weeks⊠ago
If weâre talking about gun control, fine. Iâm all for reasonable gun control. I donât think targeting hunting rifles/shotguns are the most useful though. Handguns are the issue there. Still, yeah, more good gun control would be nice. Not really part of this discussion though, but thatâs the one argument I did consider, but doesnât really apply to hunting weapons. If we can get it passed for the weapons that actually matter, then Iâd agree losing hunting weapons are fine.
Yes. That formal enforced regulation needs to exist, and I donât know anywhere that it doesnât. In the US, you need a license, and you can only kill a certain number of the animal per season, and thatâs all based on how many of the animals need to be culled, and it does need to be done. Equilibrium is maintained through this regulation.
I never said ânaturally healthyâ. I said they evolved to have a certain percentage of losses. If that isnât maintained by other predators, we need to do it. Itâs naturally (in its current state) unhealthy. Hunting is required to keep it healthy.
Sure. Thatâd be another solution. If weâre discussing policy, I think we can safely ignore it though. Thereâs a lot of solutions that are not going to happen. We donât need to rule out all of them to discuss what we actually can do.
No. They boom and collapse. This repeats, until evolution takes itâs course maybe, which will be quite a while. It doesnât reach an equilibrium state because they evolutionary pressures were different when they evolved. Maybe this isnât true for all prey animals, but many, such as deer and rabbits, it is. Population booms, they eat all easily available food, they die off from starvation or disease, then they boom back.
A lot of your argument against hunting is that it requires regulation. No one is arguing against that. It is needed, and this is already recognized and enforced. We just need to now enforce participation in a way that doesnât create negative externalities from lead poisoning.