Sunday, July 09, 2006

The Peer-to-Peer Hunter


File Under: "Don't use dial-up or you'll end up shooting lawyers in the face".

Cross-index under: "You can have my wireless mouse when you pry in out of my cold, dead, Cheetoh-stained fingers!"

This from Live Science...

LiveScience.com

Fri Jul 7, 6:01 PM ET

Louisiana has joined 21 other states in banning Internet hunting, the practice of using a mouse click to kill animals on a distant game farm.

The cyber-shooting idea was the brainchild of Texan John Lockwood, who started the web site Live-Shot.com.

The idea was this: Hunters sign up on the web site and pay some $1,500 or more. They schedule a session, then log on at their appointed time to watch a feeding station on the computer screen. The animal that was ordered—from wild hogs to antelope—is in the area, and when it approaches the food, the hunter moves on-screen crosshairs into place. A click of the mouse fires a rifle to kill the animal.

The armchair hunter's trophy animal would then be mounted and shipped for display.
Texas outlawed the practice last year.

Humane Society executive vice president Michael Markarian was pleased with the decision in Louisiana.

"Responsible hunters know there's no sport in shooting an animal remotely while lying in bed and wearing camouflage pajamas," Markarian said in a statement today.
Meanwhile, the game farm's web site now says hunters must come to the farm, where they "can now offer a unique hunting opportunity for disabled and handicapped hunters, as well as others, who may need the assistance of our system while hunting."

I gotta believe that the NRA is gonna have a huge problem with this, so let me get my biases out of the way.

I like guns.

I don’t love them. They don’t, for example, belong on the streets of Chicago because, seriously, how big a dick do you have to be to actually argue with a straight face that guns are a necessary tool for daily life outside of law enforcement, whatever sliver of frontier still remains, or going shopping in Tikrit?

Or a big enough ass to argue for guns on the basis of some ridiculous, cherry-picking reading of the 2nd amendment?

(Seriously, NRAers, just so you know, all you look is pissy and stupid when you vonce around arguing for defending your penile-compensatory hobby based on the Constitution, when you clearly would rather pass 100-lb., knife-wielding porcupines out of your urethra sideways than mention that whole “well-regulated militia” part of the 2nd.

And we all know that if the Founders returned to find you La-Z-Boy bound, stroking your M249 SAW and braying about your “rights” in an America that is now globe-straddling empire spending around half-a-trillion dollars every year on Defense, they’d bitch-slap your faux "...lying in bed and wearing camouflage pajamas" warrior ass down to the nearest Army recruiting station.)

No guns are fun, and gun-fun is all about the Godlike power to point your finger at something far away and blowing it apart. Which has almost nothing to do with hunting, because “hunting” doesn’t mean anything anymore.

Get dropped into the forest primeval, naked, with a pen-knife, and survive? Make sugar from ants and tickle carp out of a brook and onto a spit? Hell, you have my utmost respect.

But if your idea of getting in touch with your Inner Conan is going strapped into nature and waste some bunnies during bunny season, you're free to do so, but Jesus what a sad little spud you are. Pathetic, but then again even that is somewhat less pitifully weak than rolling up on a brace of canned quail in your SUV and blowing the crap out of them Cheney-style.

Either way, knock yourself, but don’t kid yourself that it’s about basic rights or some eternal struggle of Man vs. Nature. Because past the Flint Knife and Hunger vs. Pissed Off Bear level, this isn’t about hunting or rights or survival.

It’s all about guys and steel and automation.

It’s about ever more lethally accurate action from an ever safer distance, and has as little to do with testing your mettle as joysticking a Predator Drone and wasting bad guys from 6,000 mile away has to do with a warrior’s code and the martial glories and honor of ancient combat.

And if putting your beer down and pulling the trigger from a blind 30 yards away, or drawing down on some canned quail from the passenger seat of your Escalade, are both clear, bright Constitutional lines that cannot be crossed without imperiling the Republic…

…then isn’t fatally touchpadding a gazelle while you browse for the best deal on whatever Copy/Pasted Coulter atrocity they're remaindering on Amazon today every bit as manly?

Doesn’t the right to Alt+Tab over and mouse-click a lion to death while you’re waiting for your download of “She Got Ass # 13” to finish occupy sacred 2nd Amendment ground which must be defended at all costs?

Or do you want the terrorists to win?

8 comments:

Jim Yeager said...

Okay, the sport hunting gig is sorry enough to begin with. But how insecure and craven do you have to be to engage in it from behind a damn computer? What, are they afraid some pheasant will peck their shotgun-toting asses to death if they dare set foot on the reservation? Good Lord...

WereBear said...

Certain things come along in our society that highlight just how pathetic some people are, and this is certainly one of them.

If you have done such a thing, you have to defend it to your own death, because if you had the cojones to admit it was a bad thing, you probably would never have done it in the first place.

That's a nutshell version of how, when things get FUBARred, they tend to get worse.

Most people have a very limited ability to climb out of whatever pit they are in. If, at any point, they turn around to climb out, that takes growing character. It's easier to say they were right in the first place, and just keep digging.

When you embrace the Dark Side, it darkens your outlook. You just don't see other options. The only one you see clearly are the dark ones. If you have to make a habit of denying the bad things you are doing, the drive-by quail hunting is a fitting metaphor. "We kill without effort" might be their motto. If killing is the point, then less effort just makes sense.

Putting effort into something is an indicator of how important something is to you. It gives you time to think, to consider, to weigh what you are doing. This internet-shopping-get-trophy mindset is one where the person cannot even value what they get. Their satisfaction is an illusion. They have to do it over and over again to get a fragment of real satsifaction.

Which explans the staggering kills from one of these "hunts."

dcnative said...

Drifty: They're just following our Fearless Leader (in bunker)'s lead after he quail hunted a few feet from where the limo dropped him off. It's easier to do drunk, don'tya know?

jurassicpork said...

I'd be floored to discover that this Texan who first dreamed up this real blood-and-guts video game for lazy hunters isn't a Republican. I'm completely against the idea of hunting down animals for sport. You cannot tell me that a man with a high-powered Ruger rifle with a laser sight and scope complete with mil dots against a dumb animal constitutes sport in any way. Doing it with a mouse, so the animal can't even pick up your scent in the event that you're downwind is, to me, the height of cowardice.

One quote that I'll carry around with me until the end of my days is the following definition:

Sportsman, n. Someone who, every once in a while, simply has to go out and kill something.

Anonymous said...

God, I live up in Maine, and have one of these **game farms** nearby. It's a great way to get rid of the old zoo animals (and I bet you thought those warm, fuzzy zoos kept and cared for these creatures until they shuffled off this mortal coil - WRONG!!! They pack them off to game farms, where sometimes they are actually able to crawl all the way out of the crate before they get blasted.

I had this conversation with my ex, who is now, at least, an ex-hunter, too, though vociferously upholding the glories of hunting. Lurk naked on a tree limb and drop onto a deer's back so you can wrestle him to the ground and break his neck and I will call you a hunter. Otherwise, it is recreational killing. If something has to die so I can have fun, I think I need to do some real in-depth reflection...

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