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I don't really know, but a factor is probably that it was written in the context enforcing of an international treaty focussed (mostly) on hunting practices around species that migrate between different countries. Game law do tend to be like that; not sure the ins and outs of how it got extended to fine people rescuing injured woodpeckers.
Here is a positive-bias brief rendering of bird protection, which seems to suggest that lawmakers were tired of playing whack-a-bird with state and local laws and deliberately made the law extra-strong to avoid having to revisit the issue too often. Also, at the time, many many bird species were near-extinction because of the easy availability of guns, bird feather hats being popular, etc. Like seriously, apparently passenger pigeons went from literal billions of birds to extinct. Old-timey America had a bit of a problem.
Why it's more strongly prosecuted now seems to stem more from some policy and administrative changes in the 70s and 80s.
Thank you for that link. That's a perspective I didn't have before. The development, use, and eventual banning of punt guns fits into this part of history. If they were still legal, I'm not sure whether I'd mount my 200 caliber shotgun axially on my minivan's roof or buy a truck and try to get it working on a turret.
That’s a two-inch smoothbore. Shotgun caliber is measured by the number of lead balls fitting down the barrel which would weigh one pound. Eg a 10 gauge shotgun(maximum legal size) would take ten lead balls.
Punt guns were often 2 or 4 gauge, significantly larger- and probably with a barrel diameter larger than 2 inches.
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They aren't legal? Generally punt guns were black powder muzzle loaders.
Ah, look at me getting my gun laws mixed up. They're legal as antiques if they're muzzle loading. Probably legal as a destructive device if they're breach loading. Always illegal to hunt with them.
It turns out that I spend more time stuck in traffic, dreaming of having firearms mounted on my vehicles, than actually researching what's legal and what it would take.
Ahh, a fellow Toyota owner. 😀
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