Pre-empting a grave threat
State legislatures destroy the internet hunting industry!
Melanie George Marshall, a Delaware state representative who sponsored an Internet-hunting ban that passed in June, considers her legislation a matter of homeland security. "I don't want to give ideas to people," she says, "but these kinds of operations would have the potential to make terrorism easier."That's right, there is no internet hunting. It never advanced beyond a feasibility test of shooting one single hog in Texas via an internet-controlled rifle. But our brave legislators choked that one off early. Even the feds got into the act and the House introduced the Computer Assisted Remote Hunting Act. After all, they have the potential to make terrorism easier...Even the National Rifle Association endorses the ban. "It's pretty easy to outlaw something that doesn't exist," says Rod Harder, a lobbyist for the NRA in Oregon who supported an Internet-hunting ban that took effect in June. "We were happy to do it."
It's easy to be a brave legislator when there's no one to oppose you. I don't know, maybe it's good they got out in front of this one, but the rhetoric used to motivate them makes it sound like there was already a vast task force of mouse-controlled robots prowling the woods and blasting away at our strategic possum reserves.