Here’s another fine example of our government at work.
The Humane Society of the United States last year mailed more than 50,000 people an urgent message, underlined and in bold type: “Such horrific cruelty must stop and stop now!”
The cruelty in question was Internet hunting, which the animal-rights group described as the “sick and depraved” sport of shooting live game with a gun controlled remotely over the Web. Responding to the Humane Society’s call, 33 states have outlawed Internet hunting since 2005, and a bill to ban it nationally has been introduced in Congress.
But nobody actually hunts animals over the Internet. Although the concept – first broached publicly by a Texas entrepreneur in 2004 — is technically feasible, it hasn’t caught on. How so many states have nonetheless come to ban the practice is a testament to public alarm over Internet threats and the gilded life of legislation that nobody opposes.
With no Internet hunters to defend the sport, the Humane Society’s lobbying campaign has been hugely successful.
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. [source]
Now that we’ve secured the borders, cleaned up the mess in Iraq, and paid off the national debt, we can focus on important (if only theoretical) issues like internet hunting. Right?
Internet hunting is now, in fact, a federal matter. On June 14, two congressmen introduced H.R. 2711, the Computer-Assisted Remote Hunting Act. Although it had no apparent opposition, a similar bill died in committee last year, and it’s not clear whether this one has a better chance at passage.
Republican Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, one sponsor, says he first heard of Internet hunting from the Humane Society, which asked him to introduce a ban. “You just wonder,” he says, “who would do something like this?”
Nobody. Now stop wasting my money on stupid legislation and get back to work!
