I'd like to hear this as well. I'm not a hunter, but I can't see anything about being a hunter overriding the fact that carrying a gun imparts huge responsibilities that clearly weren't being lived up to, here.

The NRA supports the rights of idiots everywhere in the US to fire guns for hunting without properly identifying their targets.

I still have mixed feelings about Dick Cheney shooting a lawyer on a quail hunt. He claimed it was the victim's responsibility to stay out of his line of sight.

Mixed feelings? About someone getting shot? That's fucked up, dude.

It was a lawyer. In this case a person that was helping people and companies he knew were guilty escape punishment. He was with Cheney, who set up a fake division of Haliburton to do business with Iran while under a US embargo.

I'm not one that believes there is an afterlife where they will get punished.

Oooookay. Back to waiting for someone who hunts to weigh in, then, I suppose.

I hunt, so I'll weigh in. I'm not the apologist you're probably looking for, though.

This guy, obviously, did some stupid things. First off, he shot a person, so obviously he had no fucking clue what he was aiming at. Secondly, it was after sunset, which comes depressingly early this time of year, so even if he knew what he was aiming at, his vision would have been reduced due to the lack of light. Third, he was trespassing, which is so stupid in its own right and I have no clue why people do it. Fourthly, he wasn't even out in a stand actively hunting; he just said he thought he saw a deer so boom let's go chase it. What a moron. Finally, he was shooting near people, but given the other things, he obviously doesn't care that he was being stupid, so you get the point.

I will say two things that you can argue about:

First off, there is absolutely no test of any kind when offering someone the chance to legally hunt, carry or own a weapon, or shoot a gun that will prevent this sort of thing. In order to get your permit and your tags, you have to go through a hunter safety class, and all of the dumb things this guy did are very clearly covered. You could give someone an IQ test or a mental health exam and you wouldn't know ahead of time of anything like this. You could try a background check before giving them a gun and there would be no indication that this guy is this dumb. You could put him on a range and see whether or not he knows how to shoot and you still wouldn't know that this guy is this dumb. The fact of the matter is that stupid people exist, and sometimes stupid people get their hands on things, like guns, that make their stupidity a much bigger problem than it otherwise would be.

Second, if this cocksucker of a hunter is what you think all, or most, or any more than a select few hunters out there are like, you're out of your mind and need to get to know some hunters. I hunt for food and in order to partake in conservation measures against deer populations going out of control - I don't care about antler sheds (though a nice buck is a nice buck). I just want to eat good meat that I only get a few times a year and do something good for the natural world that might in some small way help repair the harm we have done to it. Many hunters want their rewards or their trophies, but the deer get eaten and they do everything cautiously and with the utmost regard to safety. Kids where I grew up learned how to properly use and handle guns when they were young on ranges and learned how to hunt with a responsible adult by their side walking them through it, which is exactly how it should be. I shot my first 10 gauge when I was 11 and my first rifle not long after and I was a late bloomer. You can debate the right age to start kids off on that track all you want, but the fact is that this guy deliberately went against everything that the incredibly vast majority of hunters have drilled into their heads from the moment they start hunting in the first place.

He deserves to be in prison for manslaughter at the very, very least. Tack on a trespassing charge and something about illegal use of a firearm after dark. Make it a big enough fine to pay her funeral expenses. Throw the book at him.

Oh, but he is just another "responsible gun owner" (TM). Aren't they all?

No. He's a horribly irresponsible gun owner.

@Ogion
Go back to MSNBC

"Second, if this cocksucker of a hunter is what you think all, or most, or any more than a select few hunters out there are like, you're out of your mind and need to get to know some hunters."

"Oh, but he is just another "responsible gun owner" (TM). Aren't they all?"

Wooooow..... really dude?

The vast majority of gun owners are responsible enough to not do something (actually a combination of things) as brain-meltingly stupid as what this man did. I do think we need to have stricter regulations on background checks, but I don't think any reasonable background check would have caught this guy. Let's try to focus on the actual issue and not scapegoat all gunowners for the idiocy of a small minority.

there are incidents just like the example above every year. i have hunters trespass on my land every year, in and out of season. yes there are probably only a "few" dumbass hunters, but they are carrying deadly weapons.

Set up a few hidden trail cams, call the police on them, and they will have their hunting licenses revoked, if not worse. They deserve that. I assume your property is clearly posted, but if it's not, take care of that so that there's no excusing it as an innocent mistake. If someone does something illegal to you and you have the evidence in hand to do something about it but simply don't, then I honestly don't know whether to consider you a victim or an enabler. Put up those cameras man. Protect your piece of ground and protect the people living on it.

and i suppose if those things don't work out, i could always shoot them, right bo? :-)

my OP was a wondering about where hunters go to hunt, and why some of them do that right in woods behind people's houses.

Well if you hunt on public land you risk having your setup and equipment messed with. I hunt on a friend's land. You just have to know where your space ends and where it starts.

I'm in a Facebook group where a bunch of people/dumbasses say you're allowed to shoot trespassers. I stopped trying to correct them a long time ago.

Irresponsible gun owners accidentally kill people. Police your own and stop fetishizing firearms.

We did not need to know your mind was on our junk, you pervert. Seek help.

Yes, these incidents are so common they usually don't get reported on. Hell, there were five shootings and a death the first day of deer season in Wisconsin. I've known too many hunters to have much respect. I used to spend all day everyday out in the field to feel safe. How often have I come across empty shells and empty vodka bottles together. I used to work for a guy who lost on of just grad students to hunters being reckless and stupid. If you spend significant time in the back country hunters are by far the most dangerous animals out there.

Sorry, but that's the fucking reality.

Do the bullet stop at the property line? No

Have their license revoked. Hahahaha. I doubt this guy will lose his license. These guys almost never do and they'll go hunting anyway.

Wow. You're running into a huge concentration of suck there, I'm sorry. Have you tried contacting the local authorities about it?

One time a hunter squatting right on the property line (I have 45 acres of woods and am surrounded by a couple thousand acres of forest, don’t know why he had to be right next to my house) assured me “don’t worry, I don’t shoot at houses or things that I can’t see.” Which doesn’t seem like much of a standard at all. If I prosecuted everyone every year (yes in my well posted property no) I would piss off the entire community and spend all my time talking to the state police. Like ogion said, bullets don’t stop at the property line. I am a hunter (though not obsessed like some) and I can’t fathom the risk some of these guys take.

Got no complaints about bow hunters though. Those folks really work for it.

You mentioned you're also a hunter and you have contact with other hunters, firearm and bow alike. I don't know what state you're in, but dollars to donuts there's some hunting association you can contact to report these guys (if you're not already part of it) that will be embarassed to know their own members are pulling stupid shit like this. Failing that, the authority that issues hunting licenses is going to have some kind of hazard hotline. I don't know if you've tried any of these, but the point of them is to give the organization the knowledge that they need to start putting internal pressure on these irresponsible ones to shape up. You've seen how vitriolic we can get toward those of our own who are this carelessly dangerous.

Upthread, someone mentioned "police your own". Leaving aside that they're as much your own as they are mine and bo's, in many cases, we do police our own - the alternative is intervention from a government that fundamentally misunderstands what is happening. But even the actual police rely on things like 911 to get where they need to be, when they need to be there. They have neither the legal authority nor the practical capability to shadow everyone closely enough to eliminate all of these incidents, nor will some slip through the cracks even if they do as bo talked about, and they're taxpayer-funded government entities; how much more so for private citizen associations?

That's been in four different states: Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, Virginia

But, yeah, thy probably colors my attitude.