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> guns are very useful in rural areas. For a more concrete example. My father in law lives in Michigan. His house is seated next to 40 acres of forest. There a

> guns are very useful in rural areas. For a more concrete example. My father in law lives in Michigan. His house is seated next to 40 acres of forest. There are often coyotes and other wild animals that will approach his house when they're hungry. If you're unaware, coyotes will hunt, stalk, and kill cats, dogs, and small children. To protect my children (3-5 years old) and his dogs, he shoots them.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Quite a narrow case, and it still requires careful attention in order to shoot the animals. Perhaps there are more practical alternatives with fewer externalities like fences, traps, scents, motion detecting lights, noise deterants, etc.
- bluGill 4y ago
  None of your suggestions work, animals are smart enough to figure them out in time. They work for a month at best. Traps are the best bet of your list and are a lot harder to use. And then you still need to kill the animal, release is cruel to the animal and harmful to whatever is naturally where you release it
2143 4y ago
Interesting. In my beautiful 3rd world country (yeah we remained non-aligned during the cold war), Tigers and Leopards have a tendency to come near human settlements and attack domesticated animals. Over here, killing animals (apart from chicken, fish, duck etc, which people regularly eat) is illegal. That means your can't kill snakes, deers, wild pigs, crocodiles and you certainly cannot kill Tiger, Leopards etc (because they're kind of endangered...). If you do and they find out, you're going to jail. It doesn't matter whether the aforementioned wild animals killed your animals or humans. So what do you do if presence of wild animals have been detected? You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests. By the way, recently, there was an appeal to the government to declare wild boar as pests, so that it can be killed because wild boars destroy crops and stuff. Government declined, because if the boars are killed, the big cats would starve. This might all seem strange, but over here tiger/lion/leopard population was dwindling in the last century. But their population is now at a healthy level. ----- About the gun situation here: nobody really has guns. Except very few maybe. There's plenty of crimes, but those don't involve a gun. Guns definitely would not be a solution to minimize the crime situation here.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Over here coyotes are not endangered, and deer have an overpopulation problems such that without hunters they will eat all their food by the middle of winter and then starve to death. Snakes protected though, as are wolves. There is a problem with people killing them anyway. They are not the major animals rural people target - because they are endangered there are not many. > You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests. This is something that they used to do over here. Then we discovered that when you release wild animals far from home they don't know their way around, and so they have trouble finding enough to eat, where to drink, a place to live. They are thus not in great physical shape when they encounter whatever lived there already and so are easy kill. Predators are either lone or pack animals - either way a stranger is something to kill. As such releasing a trapped animal is cruel. Unless you find a place where there is nothing else of the type, but even then we have to ask about if they have the correct genes, turns out animals of the same species get natural selection for DNA that helps in their location.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    Professional hunters can cull over populated animals, and for deer that meat can be sold or donated to shelters. Still not a compelling reason to keep saturating the country with guns, IMO.
    - 2143 4y ago
      > for deer that meat can be sold or donated to shelters Illegal here, both killing deers and eating its meat (even if you didn't kill it). Good thing in my opinion. Else there would be no deers left here.
      - lliamander 4y ago
        > Else there would be no deers left here. In the US, the hunting practices are very sustainable.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

Quite a narrow case, and it still requires careful attention in order to shoot the animals. Perhaps there are more practical alternatives with fewer externalities like fences, traps, scents, motion detecting lights, noise deterants, etc.

bluGill 4y ago
None of your suggestions work, animals are smart enough to figure them out in time. They work for a month at best. Traps are the best bet of your list and are a lot harder to use. And then you still need to kill the animal, release is cruel to the animal and harmful to whatever is naturally where you release it

2143 4y ago

Interesting. In my beautiful 3rd world country (yeah we remained non-aligned during the cold war), Tigers and Leopards have a tendency to come near human settlements and attack domesticated animals. Over here, killing animals (apart from chicken, fish, duck etc, which people regularly eat) is illegal. That means your can't kill snakes, deers, wild pigs, crocodiles and you certainly cannot kill Tiger, Leopards etc (because they're kind of endangered...). If you do and they find out, you're going to jail. It doesn't matter whether the aforementioned wild animals killed your animals or humans. So what do you do if presence of wild animals have been detected? You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests. By the way, recently, there was an appeal to the government to declare wild boar as pests, so that it can be killed because wild boars destroy crops and stuff. Government declined, because if the boars are killed, the big cats would starve. This might all seem strange, but over here tiger/lion/leopard population was dwindling in the last century. But their population is now at a healthy level. ----- About the gun situation here: nobody really has guns. Except very few maybe. There's plenty of crimes, but those don't involve a gun. Guns definitely would not be a solution to minimize the crime situation here.

bluGill 4y ago
Over here coyotes are not endangered, and deer have an overpopulation problems such that without hunters they will eat all their food by the middle of winter and then starve to death. Snakes protected though, as are wolves. There is a problem with people killing them anyway. They are not the major animals rural people target - because they are endangered there are not many. > You tell the authorities; they'll set traps, capture the animal, and release it to the forests. This is something that they used to do over here. Then we discovered that when you release wild animals far from home they don't know their way around, and so they have trouble finding enough to eat, where to drink, a place to live. They are thus not in great physical shape when they encounter whatever lived there already and so are easy kill. Predators are either lone or pack animals - either way a stranger is something to kill. As such releasing a trapped animal is cruel. Unless you find a place where there is nothing else of the type, but even then we have to ask about if they have the correct genes, turns out animals of the same species get natural selection for DNA that helps in their location.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  Professional hunters can cull over populated animals, and for deer that meat can be sold or donated to shelters. Still not a compelling reason to keep saturating the country with guns, IMO.
  - 2143 4y ago
    > for deer that meat can be sold or donated to shelters Illegal here, both killing deers and eating its meat (even if you didn't kill it). Good thing in my opinion. Else there would be no deers left here.
    - lliamander 4y ago
      > Else there would be no deers left here. In the US, the hunting practices are very sustainable.