So you would like to see me banned from the forum for defending our right to hunt? That's interesting.

It also tells us a lot about you.


One day you may be arguing with someone who does not believe that hunting is a fundamental God-given right, and that hunting should be banned. You may want to save some of my arguments to use when that day comes.

BTW: I happen to agree with Troy, but in a different way than he thinks.

Read how Troy feels about using buckshot in the other thread and you will find a pretty good description of how I feel about using a bow to hunt deer when firearms can be used to hunt deer much more effectively. Then read what the Alabama Supreme Court has said about restrictions on a fundamental right that I have posted below my notes on Heller that follow.


For those of you who feel like restrictions on the use of firearms for hunting have nothing to do with gun control and is a thin limb to go out on, consider what the US Supreme Court said about hunting while defending the Second Amendment protections of the right to "keep and bear arms" when opponents wanted to restrict the right to only their use in a militia.


Here's the weak limb that may help save your right to hunt one day.

Some of the notes I took while reading DC v Heller:

… If “bear arms” means, as we think, simply the carrying of arms, a modifier can limit the purpose of the carriage (“for the purpose of self-defense” or “to make war against the King”). But if “bear arms” means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply cannot add “for the purpose of killing game.” The right “to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game” is worthy of the mad hatter. Thus, these purposive qualifying phrases positively establish that “to bear arms” is not limited to military use.

… it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.” As we said in United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 553 (1876), “[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed . . . .”


… It is therefore entirely sensible that the Second Amendment’s prefatory clause announces the purpose for which the right was codified: to prevent elimination of the militia. The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting. But the threat that the new Federal Government would destroy the citizens’ militia by taking away their arms was the reason that right—unlike some other English rights—was codified in a written Constitution. …

… St. George Tucker’s version of Blackstone’s Commentaries, as we explained above, conceived of the Blackstonian arms right as necessary for self-defense. He equated that right, absent the religious and class-based restrictions, with the Second Amendment. See 2 Tucker’s Blackstone 143. In Note D, entitled, “View of the Constitution of the United States,” Tucker elaborated on the Second Amendment: “This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty . . . . The right to self-defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine the right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.” 1 id., at App. 300 (ellipsis in original). He believed that the English game laws had abridged the right by prohibiting “keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game.” Ibid; see also 2 id., at 143, and nn. 40 and 41. He later grouped the right with some of the individual rights included in the First Amendment and said that if “a law be passed by congress, prohibiting” any of those rights, it would “be the province of the judiciary to pronounce whether any such act were constitutional, or not; and if not, to acquit the accused . . . .” 1 id., at App. 357. It is unlikely that Tucker was referring to a person’s being “accused” of violating a law making it a crime to bear arms in a state militia.


… In his famous Senate speech about the 1856 “Bleeding Kansas” conflict, Charles Sumner proclaimed:
“The rifle has ever been the companion of the pioneer and, under God, his tutelary protector against the red man and the beast of the forest. Never was this efficient weapon more needed in just self-defence, than now in Kansas, and at least one article in our National Constitution must be blotted out, before the complete right to it can in any way be impeached. And yet such is the madness of the hour, that, in defiance of the solemn guarantee, embodied in the Amendments to the Constitution, that ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,’

… The freedmen of South Carolina have shown by their peaceful and orderly conduct that they can safely be trusted with fire-arms, and they need them to kill game for subsistence, and to protect their crops from destruction by birds and animals.” Joint Comm. on Reconstruction, H. R. Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2, p. 229 (1866) (Proposed Circular of Brigadier General R. Saxton).


… We conclude that nothing in our precedents forecloses our adoption of the original understanding of the Second Amendment. It should be unsurprising that such a significant matter has been for so long judicially unresolved. For most of our history, the Bill of Rights was not thought applicable to the States, and the Federal Government did not significantly regulate the possession of firearms bylaw-abiding citizens. Other provisions of the Bill of Rights have similarly remained unilluminated for lengthy periods. This Court first held a law to violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech in 1931,almost 150 years after the Amendment was ratified, see Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S. 697 (1931), and it was not until after World War II that we held a law invalid under the Establishment Clause, see Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. No. 71, Cham¬paign Cty., 333 U. S. 203 (1948). Even a question as basic as the scope of proscribable libel was not addressed by this Court until 1964, nearly two centuries after the founding. See New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U. S. 254 (1964). It is demonstrably not true that, as JUSTICE STEVENS claims, post, at 41–42, “for most of our history, the invalidity of Second-Amendment-based objections to firearms regulations has been well settled and uncontroversial.” For most of our history the question did not present itself.



… We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government—even the Third Branch of Government—the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad. We would not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibition of a peaceful neo-Nazi march through Skokie. See National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43 (1977) (per curiam).

The First Amendment contains the freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified, which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people—which JUSTICE BREYER would now conduct for them anew. And whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.



... and from the Supreme Court of Alabama:


"State action that limits a fundamental right is generally subject to strict scrutiny. Troxel, 530 U.S. at 80, 120 S.Ct. 2054 (Thomas, J., concurring in judgment); Clark v. Jeter, 486 U.S. 456, 461, 108 S.Ct. 1910, 100 L.Ed.2d 465 (1988)

("[C]lassifications affecting fundamental rights ... are given the most exacting scrutiny."); Graham v. Richardson, 403 U.S. 365, 375, 91 S.Ct. 1848, 29 L.Ed.2d 534 (1971)

("It is enough to say that the classification involved... was subjected to strict scrutiny under the compelling state interest test... because it impinged upon the fundamental right of interstate movement."). Strict scrutiny generally requires that the state show a compelling interest, advanced by the least restrictive means. As the United States Supreme Court said in the context of the First Amendment: "The Government may, however, [limit a fundamental right] in order to promote a compelling interest if it chooses the least restrictive means to further the articulated interest. . . .

It is not enough to show that the Government's ends are compelling; the means must be carefully tailored to achieve those ends." Sable Commc'ns of California, Inc. v. FCC, 492 U.S. 115, 126, 109 S.Ct. 2829, 106 L.Ed.2d 93 (1989).

The nature of a compelling interest varies based on the circumstances, but it is a very stringent standard; as the United States Supreme Court said in Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205, 215, 92 S.Ct. 1526, 32 L.Ed.2d 15 (1972): "The essence of all that has been said and written on the subject is that only those interests of the highest order and those not otherwise served can overbalance legitimate claims to" a fundamental right. 406 U.S. at 215, 92 S.Ct. 1526 (emphasis added).

Therefore, "we must searchingly examine the interests the state seeks to promote." 406 U.S. at 221, 92 S.Ct. 1526. See also Troxel, 530 U.S. at 80, 120 S.Ct. 2054 (Thomas, J., concurring) ("Here, the State of Washington lacks even a legitimate governmental interest—to say nothing of a compelling one—in second-guessing a fit parent's decision regarding visitation with third parties.").

The decisions of the trial court and the Court of Civil Appeals here properly applied a clear-and-convincing-evidence standard, as required by Santosky, supra. The clear and convincing evidence must demonstrate, however, that the state has a compelling interest requiring interference with the rights of the parents and that that interest is being advanced by the least restrictive means. The Act fails to provide for the application of this standard."

Ex parte ERG, 73 So. 3d 634 - Ala: Supreme Court 2011



Keep playing with the idea that I'm taking the protections of the right to hunt too far if you like. One day soon, those who think you should never hunt by any means or for any reason may be telling you the same thing.