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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29422 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 31, 2023

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Then this is a stupid way to go about that. Hunting is mostly transmitted generationally or through person to person old boys networks, and hunting classes in schools have zippo to do with it. This makes it harder to transmit hunting generationally, but no serious person thinks it actually prevents it(and even while democrats mostly don’t like the kind of people who hunt, they generally don’t want them to actually stop hunting), it’s simply a pain in the ass.

I don’t see it necessary to prevent all transmission of the hobby for the idea to work. They just need to put friction into it such that unless you personally know a hunter willing to teach you, you won’t get exposed to it. The less exposure kids get to guns, the easier it is to convince them that they’re evil death machines. Hunting is a positive exposure to guns being used responsibly as a tool and this undercuts the “scary gun” narratives the anti-gun lobby is pushing.

And my point is that hunting is already transmitted entirely person to person. Moving some bureaucratic stuff out of schools might annoy (some of)these people, but it doesn’t actually affect the rate of transmission because hunters are willing to put up with a lot of bureaucracy to bring their sons and nephews into the hobby. The federal government has tools to seriously reduce the intergenerational transmission of hunting(namely, reducing access to federally owned land by hunters). They aren’t using them and no one expects them to.

Enough pains in the ass, and you can reduce the number of hunters in the next generation to the point where you can ban it (or its implements) entirely.

The actual end result is that instead of taking hunter's ed classes in school, kids have to go to bass pro shop on an evening or a weekend, which is not a deterrent to serious hunters. It is merely annoying. You can do things to make hunting even more annoying, and democrats mostly don't do them. Public hunting land remains open, including federal land, and hunter's ed requirements aren't getting any longer or less... geared towards their obvious target audience.

And there are functionally no hunters lukewarm enough to be deterred by taking some classes at a sporting goods store with their sons instead of having their son’s school do it. It’s already an opt in activity requiring up-front investment.

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