When it counts for gun laws and trophy hunting

Open letter to our international friends, outfitters, comrades and all those who visit our website and share our attitude towards hunting, fishing and shooting


Dear friends,
                         
Advocating the right to hunt, to fish and to shoot and own weapons is a common duty for all of us, if we want to preserve this lifestyle and these great activities for us, and for our children and grandchildren as well. The opponents of trophy hunting and private gun ownership co-operate on international level – not only in organisations like the International Action Network on Small Arms (IANSA). They also co-operate in informal initiatives and in ad hoc-alliances to increase the pressure during specific campaigns in individual countries.
          
We are convinced that we do also need a much stronger co-operation on international level in favour of our beliefs – not only because we like hunting, fishing and shooting. This is also important, because at the end of the day these activities are among the most successful initiatives for wildlife preservation (as the German expert Dr Baldus, President of the Tropical Game Commission of CIC, stated “Who pays, stays”) and many of us own their living with it and/or see these activities as an important part of their life – very often hunting, fishing and shooting are a family tradition since generations.
        
Yes, we have powerful organisations like the International Council for Game and Wildlife Conservation (CIC ), the Safari Club International (SCI), the International Association for the Protection of Civilian Arms Rights or the Foundation for European Societies of Arms Collectors (FESAC) – to name just a few.
And we have a lot of big organisations with relevance beyond the frontiers of their home country like the National Rifle Association (NRA) and we have an increasing number of smaller organisations (like in Germany ProLegal, Verband für Waffentechnik und Geschichte or Fördervereinigung legaler Waffenbesitz) and informal networks and projects (like our Weblog JagdWaffenNetz).
           
But we are convinced that supporting our objectives needs to be a multi-level approach of many. We urgently need the organisations mentioned above and strongly support membership. But we also think that in case of urgent needs each of us should support those who share our beliefs. We are prepared to support your causes with the instruments we have (publishing articles, sending protest mails, joining groups at Facebook etc.).
           
Currently we are in Germany since approximately one and a half year in a situation where hunters and shooting enthusiasts defend there rights against a growing number of individual journalists, politicians and lobbyists of Non Government Organisations. These people have also managed
- to infiltrate other organisations (e.g. created foundations in connections to one of the two big churches or fundamentally changed attitude of some media),
- to actually create anti-hunting stories from scratch (nonsense like: lions from Germany are imported to South Africa to be shot during canned hunting by German hunters) and
- to dramatically increase the number of restrictions for gun owners (just one example: today police can come and see your guns without any incident or suspicion that you have done anything wrong – even potential criminals have more rights to refuse access to their homes).
            

Since a school shooting in 2009, where a student had stolen the gun of his father and killed many of his fellow students, any incident where a gun was involved that can said to be of legal origin – even if it was stolen or even if authorities should have denied the right to own guns for severe reasons if they had done their job properly – soon turns into another campaign against gun ownership in general.
           
And since approximately two years, when Green politicians came into power in some of the bigger German states, they slowly but surely change German hunting laws and turn many traditional rights that are important for maintaining bio diversity in our country into illegal practices. Among them is using traps against predators (which you otherwise can not hinder from destroying birds and little mammals) or feeding of game during the strong winters we have. In the long run they intend to change all hunting practices to fulfil only a very specific role of literally eliminating species that may cause conflict with farmers or owners of forests (like wild boars and roe deer) or are not in the focus of the (economic) interest of the usual suspects from NGOs who “humanize” some species in order to have their fund raising on high levels (e.g. wolves).
      
Recently in one of the biggest German states, Baden Württemberg, a Green-Social Democrat Government was elected and a Green Prime Minister now leads one of the wealthiest states. On their agenda is among other restrictions for hunting and gun ownership making the ownership of handguns and/or ammunition nationwide illegal. Fortunately our organisations are pretty much aware of this development. However, we are convinced that only a strong grass-root support will make the day, when it counts – and this might also need some e-mails from outside Germany.