WRAL.com reports that a North Carolina Senate Panel has okayed hunting for part of the day on Sunday in the Tar Heel State. The bill, which is being passed on to the full Senate, would allow hunting with firearms on Sundays, but only after 12:00pm. Because…reasons, I guess . . .
It is already legal to hunt with bows and arrows on Sunday, but this bill would allow for those using rifles to hunt on private property with the permission of the property’s owner. In addition to having to wait until after noon, those hunting on Sundays would have to stay 500 yards from a place of worship, a restriction not in place any other day of the week.
I say good riddance. These sorts of blue laws exist to enforce a religious conformity on American citizens, something that government is not properly empowered to do. If you’re not interested in hunting due to religious reasons on, then you should stay at home. But something is either a right or it isn’t, and if hunting is one of the reasons that the second amendment exists (which even President Obama appears to have conceded,) there’s no excuse for these sorts of legislatively-enforced religious restrictions.
Predictably, the bill has caused a bit of ruffled feathers on the part of some men of the cloth. My advice to them is that if the freedom to legally hunt on Sundays will “weaken the value” of what you believe to be the Lord’s Day, then perhaps the people you need to spend your considerable powers of persuasion on are not the members of the legislature charged with upholding the Constitution, but rather the members of your own flock.
Sunday hunt’in in ‘No Carolina, shall issue carry permits for all legal in D.C., cats mating with dogs…
Mercy me!
Sorta like saying ‘no booze for you on Sunday morning, you should be in church, you heathen’.
And much like those laws the people that live in the Mountains never bother to obey those laws.
<== born in raised in western NC.
When I lived there, the State run liquor stores were closed on Sunday. (Still Are), And no bars or restaurants could serve alcohol until 1:00pm. Than the Carolina Panthers NFL team was had, and revenue trumped “blue laws” and they backed it off to 12. How convienent.
Still had and have dry counties to boot.
We couldn’t target shoot until after church hours on Sunday, we did it as a courtesy, ok, I got that. But the no hunt Sunday law should have been done away with long ago.
Yep, we had no Sunday liquor sales in WA State when I was growing up. All gone now. Liquor sold every day of the week and got taken away from the State Liquor Stores and privatized a while back. Only problem is that when they did that the tax on liquor went through the roof. Of course nobody talked much about that until after the law passed. Total tax on a bottle of booze is about 33% more than the list price on the bottle now. State got rid of quite a few workers and makes more money now from the tax increase without the other issues that go along with managing retail sales, employees, benefits and so on.
So, what they are saying is I couldn’t use my own private property to hunt before 12? Although my property in NC is not out of town and is not big enough for deer but I do get a few rabbits hanging out in the back.
I don’t have any problem with the wait until noon on Sunday or the requirement to stay 500′ away from a church. I think it shows respect for other people’s beliefs and won’t disrupt their normal routine. A lot of the older folks don’t get out often other than to attend church and the possibility of stray bullets hitting them might keep them from attending. I also don’t think you should do noisy things during church hours regardless of whether you are a believer or not. You should not mow your lawn, use your chainsaw, shoot your gun or take off on your unmuffled Harley when others are in prayer.
So…none of these noisy things any Saturday for praying Jews? Or several times a day for praying Muslims?
Or is it only disturbing to one particular deity?
A lot of the older folks don’t get out often other than to attend church and the possibility of stray bullets hitting them might keep them from attending.
…because in states with 7 day hunting like Michigan, hunters shoot churchgoers every Sunday…
Go to Iran, then. Keep your religion out of my laws.
You do realize that our Constitution is based on the Bible, right? Some parts almost word for word ie. two witnesses for murder, president must be natural born, etc. Where they went wrong is the interpretation of Sunday being the Sabbath. The Sabbath was the last day of the week and part of the Jewish Law (which Christians are no longer under).
Most of Western morality and law (which the United States doesn’t have exclusive claim to) is based on on tenets of the Christian faith. It should come as no surprise to you that Christianity of one flavor or another has been the dominant faith throughout the Western world for a thousand or so years.
You can split hairs over the origins of our laws and what you think it means all you like; the founders decided the state would NOT sanction any given faith in order to prevent exactly this sort of nonsense.
The fact that the ass-clowns in my state legislature didn’t abolish the law in its entirety and only “loosened” the restrictions is f*cking offensive. I don’t even f*cking HUNT these days.
Waiting till noon on Sunday is a problem, though. Every deer I have taken has been well before noon, usually right after sunrise. A lot of people are coming out of the woods by then, because the deer aren’t usually out anymore, and go back a couple hours before sunset when the deer are out and active again. Sunday is a day off for almost everyone, and is a good day to hunt because you don’t have to take off work to do it. Having to wait till noon is just another wasted day of hunting, you may as well not even go. I for one will continue to hunt starting at sunrise and will also ignore any other laws that are religion based including any liquor laws. As far as I’m concerned, any laws based solely on religion are illegal. Don’t bother calling me an atheist or anything,(I’m a southern baptist) I’m sure as HELL not going to follow any sharia laws based on that religion with the false god or his pedophile prophet, I don’t care what government agency passes them.
You, sir, deserve a solid fistbump and a bro hug.
The blue laws in NC are one of the very few things that make me absolutely batshit about my state.
I am fine with this law but please spare me the leftist claptrap about separation of Church and state. How well has that gone for America since the 1960s?
Go ahead and continue to separate away, but remember to load up heavy because without God anything goes and morals become what one thinks is right at a given moment. Kinda like a liberal democrat.
Without God, anything goes? This agnostic libertarian begs to differ.
Moral, ethical societies need a framework of logic and empathy — human qualities that aren’t exclusive to religion.
I have nothing against religion as such, but I don’t trust it very far. At its best religion is a powerful civilizing force; at its worst it corrodes the very foundations of humanity (e.g., modern Islamism).
If you want to see how morals can work without relying on religion — or if you’re just interested in ethical issues — check out ethicsalarms.com. It’s a great thought-provoking website.
Go ahead. Reinvent the wheel and come back to the same place. Churches of merit teach that we can come to know God through studying the world and humanity. That being said how many are really going to be influenced by ethics alarm?
Finally why when discussing Christianity do we always end up with Muslims being thrown in our faces? Last I checked Christians, (and Azeris) were their #1 target. (Here comes the crusades argument) please do better.
Christians are NOT the #1 target by extremist Muslims, but rather other Muslims. Just as the Catholics vs. Protestants of only a few hundred years ago, sectarian violence is the primary plague in SWA.
If you had actually read Ing’s post, you would’ve seen that he was using Islam as a modern example of a religion that corrodes society.
Who says, you? While the Shia our obviously a target for the Sunni, vice versa holds true. Meanwhile they BOTH attack Christians. (And others like the Azeris) don’t throw Christians in the Muslim bus. Last I checked they started and run most of our hospitals, they run most of the food banks and give more money for world relief than any other religion or organization by far.
Still waiting for the 12th century crusades argument or the 13th century inquisition. Muslim Isis is killing the world Today. Not Christians anywhere.
Muslim Isis is killing the world Today. Not Christians anywhere.
Give it another thousand years bub, it’ll be your turn again…
Heard a very persuasive argument once that outside of religious belief, there is really no objective basis for any particular standard of “morality”. “Empathy” won’t cut it, since someone I disagree with is supposed to “empathize” with me to the same extent that I “empathize” with him–so we are left in the same “moral” standoff we started at. Different people have different notions of what “compassion” means, and even utilitarianism can get a bit tricky, as ddifferent people have different ideas as to what constitutes “good”. Without some kind of “beyond human” standard, morality becomes strictly a matter of individual subjectivity. Interesting observation I thought.
Combined response to JosephQuixote and Another Robert:
I’m not attacking or defending any particular religion. I’m saying that religion isn’t the universal absolute that it’s assumed to be.
Empathy as an innate human quality is no less reliable than religion. If religion taps into some sort of universal, absolute moral value, why do we have so many different religions doing so many different things?
In this case, “empathy” means that you won’t kill that someone you disagree with because you disagree with him, as you would not want to be killed yourself by someone that disagrees with you.”
Money quote.
Growing up in a Protestant/Catholic home really highlighted this for me. Many religious folk decry the “moral relativism” of atheists, yet their sect itself uses the same moral relativism.
<I."If religion taps into some sort of universal, absolute moral value, why do we have so many different religions doing so many different things?"
Because of Man’s flaws, not God’s.
@Grindstone: All ’empathy” means is that I am willing to take on the other person’s point of view. If another person wants to kill me because he wants my stuff, if I “empathize” with him that means I am willing to take on his point of view. Not very productive, from my point of view.
@ing: My point is that religion does not “tap into” universal precepts; it sets them. Arguably, there are no “universal” human precepts. Anything you think is “wrong” will be regarded as “right” or aat least “no problem” in some culture somewhere.
If you truly believe you need threats from an intangible deity to keep yourself in check, then maybe you shouldn’t have firearms.
Maybe it’s not about fear or threat, but humbling and service.
The fundamental, universal idea driving all religion is not the name of the God, the book in which he’s written about, etc…but about submission of will to higher, truly transcendental will.
Worship is an acceptance of finiteness of self. There is much more deepness in most religion than many ‘non-religious’ people (of various flavors) appreciate.
That they can tell you when you can begin hunting anything in season on YOUR property is preposterous.
All too often, churches celebrate any law that advances their interests while crying like babies when laws go the other way. What they should be doing is telling the government to stay out of everybody’s personal business.
If churches are running out of congregants and want to pack their pews on Sunday or any other day, then they should find out what they’re doing wrong and fix it. But they have no business using the government as a lever to bend others to their will.
Used to be we were a polite, respectful and courteous bunch. Especially in rural areas when Sunday meant something to others regardless of a particular faith.
As much as I agree with the NC decision, lots of private land is owned next to or within earshot of gunfire. The homeowners will police themselves as my family does. They seem to remember a more polite time from a bygone era.
Courtesy and respect used to count for something. Even if the law was/is silly by today’s standards, the locals will handle it like they always have.
I don’t see any validity to the half day thing. I’m sure NC is like other states and already has a safety zone requirement on hunting within a certain distance of inhabited structures. And the sound of gunfire? It might break your meditation momentarily but really. My church is right next to a Norfolk Southern Line, nobody stops the trains that are on time at 11:00am every Sunday and the congregation has been meeting there longer than trains have been in existence. You get used to it.
So sayeth the Faith Militant.
GOT reference.
Can’t hunt with my gun on a Sunday? Oy Vey… half the goyem are hung over, what would they care?
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