Hunters are wiping out habitat for pheasants....

[Superfly]

NOT...

Link

Some other highlights from the pheasant conservation arena:

-Over 100,000 grassroots members and volunteers who have developed more than 2.7 million acres of pheasant and other wildlife habitat since inception
-600 chapters completing over 25,000 projects annually
-More than 4,000 educators promoting conservation through the Leopold Education Project
-A vast network of individual and corporate contributors.

So, what has groups like C.A.S.H done lately?

Decide for yourself

[DarkPhenyx]

1. Hunters can be one of the strongest allies...

...for the Environmental Movement. Unfortuantely we keep alienating them instead of educating them and bringing them into "the fold".

[CO Liberal]

2. But They Can Also Turn On You

[Township75]

3. What's your point?

?

[CO Liberal]

5. Why Cultivate Potential Voters Who Will Turn Away.....

...the minute the Nuts Ruining America convinces them the Democratic Party is evil?

[Township75]

6. So you think it is a good idea to NOT court Union voters?

After all, they are hunters, and we do lose a good portion (at least one third) of union voters to the repubs.

So you think we shouldn't try to get them back because they might turn on us?


Hey CO-L, just so you know, ANY voter can turn on us!

[CO Liberal]

7. But....

...if we compromise ourselves just to please a bunch of fickle pro-gunners, don't we run the risk of losing our base?

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[alwynsw]

10. Now I'm fickle?

Please state your basis and facts for that idea?

WTF am I doing here on DU if I'm so fickle?

[LARED]

13. If you don't mind me asking

whom exactly is 'we' and what is getting compromised?

[DoNotRefill]

14. "compromise ourselves"...

Simple numbers: There are between 70-80 million people who own guns legally in the US. They can't all vote Republican, or they'd win every election. How many members of the Brady Organization are there?

The Right to keep and bear arms is a civil right guaranteed by the constitution. I thought we were the Party of Civil Rights?

40 years ago, we WERE a pro-gun party. The Presidents we elected were almost all members of the NRA. It was a non-issue. Some in our party began turning on the issue, becoming anti-gun. Consequently, a lot of people have told us to "fuck off" at the ballot box, because we've been catering recently to a tiny minority of viciously anti-gun people. you want to find the "fickle" people? Hint: don't bother looking at the pro-gunners, they didn't change. Some in our party changed. This change has driven away large parts of our core constituencies. They didn't leave us, we betrayed them, and literally drove them out, just as we'd drive away large parts of our constituencies if we became rabidly pro-life, or anti-homosexuals.

If we try to win based only upon people who vote Democratic regardless of how crappy our candidates are, we're on the road to oblivion as a party.

[MrBenchley]

16. I love this shift of topic....

Which union members are these? The teachers' union? The ILGWU? The Newspaper Guild?

"After all, they are hunters"
Horseshit...most hunting goes on in right to work states....

"we do lose a good portion (at least one third) of union voters to the repubs."
Yeah? Let's see you back that up...

[DoNotRefill]

21. I live in a "right to work state"....

but my wife is still Union (AFL/CIO)....as was her father, as is her brother (both IBEW). She doesn't hunt. They do or did.

"Right to work" does NOT mean that there are no union people in those states. And around here at least, lots of them hunt, too. Hell, they've got to do SOMETHING until the Hall calls....

[MrBenchley]

22. Hahahahahaha...

""Right to work" does NOT mean that there are no union people in those states."
But it does mean that all workers get screwed by the asswipes the NRA puts into office with their blood money.

[MrBenchley]

18. For that matter...

Why cultivate a tiny and vocal extremist fringe that is

--primarily opposed to Democratic values and
--likely to alienate the vast majority of voters now in the Democratic fold?

As Iverglas posted some time ago, the last election saw a lot of African American voters sitting out the election.....and African Americans (and other minorities) overwhelmingly support gun control. Why not make more of an effort to reach these constituencies, who already share our core values of tolerance, decency and progress?

Why not make more of an effort to reach the suburban vote (often derided by gun whackos as "soccer moms") who overwhelmingly support gun control and don't want a moron in an eagle costume plugging guns in their public schools? (Schools they want improved, not abolished, as we do.) Why suck up to the people who are pushing that voucher scheme (Hello, NRA board member Grover Norquist)?

[DoNotRefill]

23. If they're a tiny extremist fringe....

then why are there 80 million of them? That's not a tiny extremist fringe....that's a pretty big portion of the population. And it includes the likes of Howard Dean, Wes Clark, and John Kerry. (Dean because he's against more gun control laws, Clark as a gun owner, and Kerry as a "hunter").

[MrBenchley]

27. Too frigging funny

Even a majority of gun owners support gun control...

Adn there aren't anything near 80 million hunters...

"The number of American hunters has been in a slow but steady decline for the last 20 years, and in the last five years alone fell from 14 million to 13 million, one of the steepest drops since the USFWS began keeping records in 1955. And as the general population has swollen to 290 million, hunting has become important to an ever shrinking minority. Today, only 6 percent of Americans 16 and older hunt.
More unsettling, the average age of hunters is increasing. Sixty-seven percent of all hunters are now over the age of 35. Only 14 percent are between 16 and 24—and just 4 percent are 16 and 17 years old. In the language of wildlife biology, the sport of hunting is having "recruitment failure"—a condition that, in the wild, ultimately leads to extinction. "

http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/hunting/article/0,13199,458090,00.html

[DoNotRefill]

12. so could NOW members....

if the Republicans became pro-choice and feminists.

[solinvictus]

4. Hunters and the environment

It was hunters and fishermen who first brought the problems with groundwater contamination to the forefront of issues in the 1970's. Hunters also help to preserve and sustain old growth forests and wetlands.

[Emoto]

8. This is lost information

Few recall that hunters, fishermen, and sportsmen have worked at doing their thing in harmony with nature (I exempt commercial ventures from this thought) for generations, and have sought to conserve the beauty and majesty of nature far longer than any other group. Look at the man who created the first national park: Teddy Roosevelt. He was a hunter and avid shooter who passionately loved the outdoors and did more than perhaps anyone else to preserve it.

[alwynsw]

11. Bravo!

Sanity remains alive!

Well stated.

[DoNotRefill]

15. Not only that....

but as benchley points out frequently, the gun industry is in business trying to make money. 11% of all the money they generate is paid as a FET and goes to the government to help finance environmental work. So, if MrBenchley is correct about them making huge amounts of money, they must also put huge amounts of money into the environment, too, right?

[MrBenchley]

17. Yeah, just look at all the pro-environment politicans

the NRA gives money to....Oops! They don't.

[CO Liberal]

19. Indirectly, They DO Wipe Out the Habitat

Hunters who financially support the Nuts Ruining America help get more Republicans elected. Once in office, the Republicans allow growth to go on unbridled, destroying wetlands and other environmentally-sensitive areas.

[MrBenchley]

20. For that matter, how much of the damage to the environment

now is due to hunters' idiotic decisions and policies in the past?

http://www.humboldt.edu/~rnb2/wldf%20422/Overabundance.htm

[Superfly]

24. Wow, that's a stretch....

similarly, every time you buy a tank of gas, you are killing Iraqis.

[CO Liberal]

25. Not If You Buy Citgo

They buy their oil from Venezuela.

[Superfly]

26. Oh yeah....Venezuala...a model of progressive human rights

Sheesh, might as well just hand your money to Fidel Castro

Link