Absolutely nothing endures like a bad idea or a major mistake, often both, that get lobbied into legislation.
More than 35 years ago, now, I arrived about noon at my outfitter’s spread for a Montana deer and turkey hunt, then was astonished to be handed a sandwich or two and hustled out hunting.
“But it’s Sunday,” I protested.
“Closest church is 50 miles away,” I was told. “Sunday hunting’s legal in Montana, and the mule deer are moving.” So they were; my companion Hugh Landerkin and I looked over more than 1,500 mulies by sundown.
That started this column on a two-decade crusade to end Alberta’s priest-ridden ban on Sunday hunting that appeared as the top item in the new province’s one page, first hunting regulations in 1908.
Gradually the Sunday hunting ban was relaxed in various areas of the province until, during the tenure of sustainable resource minister, Hon. Ted Morton, it was removed almost entirely, except for a very few areas, most notably my old home and native land, God’s country, the Prairie Wildlife Management Units (100 Series), generally a huge area of the south east corner of the province.
Some people might call that the buckle of the Bible Belt, but on a Sunday, you can shop till you drop, go to a bar, hire a hooker, go fishing, hunt upland game, even attend church if you wish, but you still can’t legally hunt big game.
Alberta’s battle to end the Sunday hunting ban is nothing compared to that currently raging in Pennsylvania, one of the major deer hunting states in the union, and one of 11 U.S. states where Sunday hunting is still outlawed. Alberta’s 1908 start to the Sunday hunting ban is recent compared to most state Sunday hunting bans which go back to the so-called “blue laws” enacted in the 1700s. (To avoid the calls and emails, the other 10 US states still with Sunday hunting bans are: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia.)
Just how serious the debate in Pennsylvania has become is that, for the first time I can recall in any jurisdiction, numbers, economic impacts — rather than just rights and freedoms in a democratic society — are entering the argument.
A report prepared for Pennsylvania’s Legislative Budget and Finance Committee, issued early in November, showed that legalizing hunting on Sundays could generate $804 million in economic activity, $56.8 million in state and federal taxes annually, plus create 7,349 full and part-time jobs.
“Those numbers are stunning,” said Crawford County Republican Rep. John Evans. Those numbers are loose change, chickenfeed, compared to the $2 billion we Canadians have wasted in just 14 years on our useless long gun registry that we are still not rid of, but are promised will soon be gone, when, and if Bill C-19 ever passes.
While we wait, the forces that got us the registry in the first place, people who know nothing about guns, gun laws, lawful gun owners, or criminals, are lobbying again to save the registry, in full or in part.
A few provinces apparently intend to establish their own long gun registries and are outraged to the point of threats of court action, that the Conservatives promise that the federal long gun registry records will be erased, destroyed. Albertans should remember that Wildrose Alliance leader Danielle Smith has been heard to say that Alberta erred in not establishing its own long-gun registry.
Even staunch supporters of ending the registry tend to get it wrong. Canwest columnist Lorne Gunter is not a gun owner, but is an advocate of civil rights, always deplores useless governmental waste, and so applauds the imminent demise of the federal long gun registry.
Those beliefs lead him to advocate the end to the Firearms Possession and Aquisition Licences, citing a scientist who has concluded that the licencing requirement has been no more effective in fighting crime than the long gun registry.
Agreed, but, unlike the registry, licencing gun owners, testing them, checking their backgrounds, and requiring them to store their firearms safely does contribute greatly to public safety, especially in this modern era where it is unlikely that a new gun owner will have learned anything worthwhile from his father, let alone about guns and gun safety.
The federal course you must take and pass before you can acquire or possess a firearm is excellent; I know, I took and passed it, even though I didn’t have to, from Warden Robinson and Venny Chocholacek, and learned a few things I hadn’t from my father, an excellent teacher, and from my own reading and hunting and shooting experience.
From a freedom and civil liberty standpoint, the intrusive personal questions should be removed from the licence application form. But everything else about licencing should remain. Certainly criminals, by definition, do not participate, but for the huge group of lawful firearm owners and the general public, licencing prevents accidents, and saves lives.
Bob Scammell is an award-winning outdoors writer living in Red Deer.