Should Killing Animals Be a Constitutional Right?

Four states are set to vote next week on whether to make hunting and fishing constitutional rights.

Animal murderers in Arizona, Arkansas, Tennessee and South Carolina feel threatened by the growing animal-rights movement and view these ballot initiatives as proactive measures to keep their killing lawful.

"They start with cats and dogs and the next thing you know, someone says it's inhumane to shoot a deer," ["said Steve Faris, a Democratic Arkansas state senator and the bill's lead sponsor there."]

Note to Faris: It is inhumane to shoot a deer. Whether it's a dog, a person or a deer, we all have the ability to feel the scorching pain of our flesh being ripped open.

Ironically national organizations like The Humane Society of the United States aren't fighting these proposals. There are several possible reasons for this: saving resources to push for other legislation, wanting to appease the National Rifle Association and/or not being overly concerned with hunting because its numbers have been declining for years.

Ten state constitutions already provide for the right to hunt and fish. Nine of those provisions were put in place after 1996.

Interestingly, in a piece in Psychology Today animal behaviorist Jonathan Balcombe writes that nature -- and more specifically the "wild" animals in it -- aren't as ferocious and out to get us as we think they are. He cites a book by a "veteran wildlife filmmaker" who "points out the relative rarity of predator-prey interactions in the wild."

"[I]f you see a bear feeding on a deer carcass in a film, it is almost certainly a tame bear searching for hidden jellybeans in the entrails of a deer's stomach."

And the Discovery Channel's Web site for "Man vs. Wild" has this disclaimer: "On some occasions, situations are presented to Bear [the show's host] so he can demonstrate survival techniques."

Balcombe surmises that we perpetuate the myth that nature is uncaring because it makes us feel better.

I believe a major reason why we tout cruel nature is that it absolves us of guilt for being cruel ourselves; If nature is cruel and we are just another part of nature, then surely it is natural and defensible to be cruel, so the thinking goes. But how many species do you know that cage others and kill them before they grow to be adults, as we do to most of the animals destined for our dinner plates. What other animal conducts harmful experiments on other creatures before killing them? Only us.

Of course, there's no reason to hunt or to fish. We won't starve to death.

Faris, the Arkansas legislator, gave another false reason for the importance of keeping hunting and fishing legal: They're important to the state economy. But so was slavery. Arkansas can exist, more civilly, without them.

Incidentally if you get a kick out of the Darwin Awards (which highlight the dumb ways people manage to die) or are feeling a bit down about the slow but steady progress animal rights is making, set a Google alert for "hunting accidents." Reading about people getting killed by their own or a fellow hunter's gun can be downright uplifting.

I don't condone killing any type of animal -- whether they be non-human or human. But I'd rather a hunter kill himself than an innocent being with his gun.

(Image courtesy of SmartAssProducts.com.)