Saturday, December 18, 2010

The world’s largest army? America’s hunters

by Bruce Ross

Monday, December 6, 2010

I don’t spend my fall weekends tramping around the woods in pursuit of a buck, but a lot of my friends and neighbors do.

This blogger adds up all the hunters in just a handful of states, and comes to a striking conclusion:

The state of Wisconsin has gone an entire deer hunting season without someone getting killed. That’s great. There were over 600,000 hunters.Allow me to restate that number. Over the last two months, the eighth largest army in the world – more men under arms than Iran; more than France and Germany combined – deployed to the woods of a single American state to help keep the deer menace at bay.

But that pales in comparison to the 750,000 who are in the woods of Pennsylvania this week. Michigan’s 700,000 hunters have now returned home. Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia, and it is literally the case that the hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.

His point? America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower.

Hunting — it’s not just a way to fill the freezer. It’s a matter of national security.

Why the Terrorists Can Never Win

These numbers are part of why those of us who grew up in rural parts of the country simply don’t comprehend the gun-grabbing impulses of some. Every single year, millions of Americans carry high power rifles into the woods and more or less do as they please – some shoot at deer, some just drink a lot – and it is a complete non-story. The number of people injured and killed by these guns will pale in comparison to those injured and killed in driving accidents during the same time period. FULL STORY

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