Since President Obama left office, Republicans everywhere have been celebrating the end of the crypto-Muslim caliphate, where nobody was allowed to own guns, and everybody had to pretend to be nice to one another. Gross! Some of the first things that Republicans did was set about trying to privatize public lands by pushing for laws that will end wildlife protections like “hunting baby bear cubs with mothers.” There are a few states that use helicopters when hunting certain feral animals for population control purposes. There are only two states that allow anybody who wants to pay to shoot animals from a helicopter—Texas and Louisiana. Oklahoma doesn’t want to left out of the shooting-fish-in-a-barrel sport of helicopter hunting.
“They are calling that, ‘the flying pig bill,’ anecdotally,” Rep. Jeff Coody, R-Granfield, and a co-sponsor of the bill, said with a chuckle last week.
Aerial gunners already are used to help control feral swine in Oklahoma. However, only trained, licensed contractors under the auspices of the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture Food and Forestry can carry out the work. Its Wildlife Services Division announced earlier this year its agents killed 11,206 pigs, mostly by air, in 2016.
Hilarious. This is part of the symbolic trend of getting rid of regulations that have been implemented over the years, usually for both human and environmental safety reasons.
“The intention was to take aerial depredation a little more back to what was originally intended several years ago,” Coody said. “Back then we were trying to provide rules by which it could take place through the Ag Department, but like a lot of agencies will, they over-regulated and put so many administrative rules on their books it has made it difficult for private individuals to go out and shoot from an aircraft.”
One regulation still in place (for now) is that you have to have a special license in order to shoot guns from an aircraft, and this bill wouldn’t override that feature. Ha! I’m just joking—this is Oklahoma and these are fucking insane people!
Provisions of the bill would eliminate the need for individual gunners to be licensed, or even named, and would remove a limitation on firearms used.
“Right now you can only used pelletized ammo,” Coody said. “With buckshot you have to get too close, and with the bigger hogs you’re not going to kill them. The safest and most effective way is with a rifle.”
That’s a good point. you know what could really wipe those goddamn hogs out? Grenades! Napalm! Let’s get out our “Flight of the Valkyries” and blast it on the PA system—hey, let’s drop PA systems on wild animals heads!!!!