Gun control activists have become increasingly emboldened. The shift from targeting the margins to challenging the mainstream signals nothing is off-limits. Gun bans are being aimed at the most popular firearms in America. Now, even hunting—which survives in countries that ban defensive gun use—is being targeted.
In Oregon, Initiative 28 (IP28), also known as the PEACE Act (People for the Elimination of Animal Cruelty Exemptions Act), is a ballot initiative petition that seeks to ban hunting, fishing, trapping and wildlife management, along with many traditional agricultural practices. Whether it will reach voters in November remains to be seen, but this attempt to eliminate age-old American traditions speaks to the current prohibitionist mentality.
When our opponents drop the pretense of “reasonable regulation” and reveal their true agenda, we should take heed.
According to the IP28 websites. “This petition does propose a ban on any intentional injury of an animal except in self-defense and in the case of any veterinary care. That would include banning slaughterhouses, hunting and fishing, and experimenting on animals.”
That shocking admission, moreover, is grounded in a childishly simplistic worldview that seems formed more by Saturday-morning cartoons and plush animals than from experiences in mountains, fields and streams.
Explaining the petition’s “moral stance,” the FAQ continues: “Most Oregonians already recognize that the animals we share our homes with have needs for play, curiosity, affection, protection, etc. and we go to great lengths to meet those needs. Yet for other animals we either don’t recognize those needs or, when we do, we don’t value them enough not to injure and kill them.”
The petition’s advocates, in other words, see wild animals, livestock, even fish swimming in the state’s waterways as extensions of their own house pets. Yet a Rocky Mountain goat is not the same thing as a toy poodle.
But it’s not just naiveté that drives these efforts. There is also strategy. Gun-control activists and animal-rights extremists understand that restrictions on firearms or sporting activities create a “new normal” for subsequent generations. This can involve a war of attrition where the accumulation of expense, red tape and liability gradually siphon off participants until the industries or traditions that support these practices collapse. Or, as is the intended outcome of IP28, brute political force operating in an ideological echo chamber can ram through a policy that simply overwhelms the minority and forces them to cope or relocate.
In either case, one generation removed won’t even know what they are missing.
Attacks on traditional hunting and fishing have unfortunately become more common in recent years, especially throughout the western states newly populated by tax refugees from “progressive” jurisdictions like California.
Even so, bans on outdoor or agricultural ways of life represent a new extreme. And ballot measures such as IP28 reduce complicated decisions around conservation, food sourcing, wildlife management, rural culture and outdoor traditions to an emotional up-or-down vote, inviting those with no grounding in the issues to determine their fate.
NRA has long defended the traditions in which firearms form a critical nexus to outdoor heritage. These efforts include opposing bans on the use of lead ammunition, opposing excessive limits on access to public hunting lands and shooting ranges and opposing overreaching hunting regulations (including Sunday hunting bans). We have also supported state constitutional protections for hunting and fishing, which provide a bulwark against efforts like IP28.
NRA supports and promotes the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation, one of the most successful conservation frameworks in the world, which establishes wildlife as a public trust. That model heavily intersects with not only science-backed conservation but also with over 150 years of NRA’s advocacy on hunting and shooting sports.
The fact that IP28 has advanced as far as it has should be a warning to sporting advocates nationwide. Hunting and fishing have traditionally been considered the “safe harbor” in gun-policy debates. No less a firearm prohibitionist than Joe Biden was fond of remarking, “You don’t need an AR-15 to hunt deer.”
But what will happen to your bolt-action .308 when the deer themselves are off limits?
Nor can hunters in other states console themselves that Oregon, a virtual paradise of outdoor recreation, is somehow uniquely vulnerable. Hunting and fishing are American ideals inseparably linked to self-reliance, personal responsibility, individual liberty and reverence for our country’s natural splendor. They are woven into the nation’s very fabric. But for some, including the proponents of IP28, that only makes them higher-priority targets.
