Take a pigeon.
Now put that pigeon, along with thousands of others, into small coops that don't give the bird much freedom to move.
Don't worry about food or water. It won't matter.
Take some of the pigeons--who are already disoriented from hours, maybe days, of confinement--and place a couple of them each into spring-loaded box traps on a field.
About 20 yards behind the traps have people with 12-gauge shotguns line up.
Release the pigeons and watch juveniles disguised in the bodies of adults shoot these non-threatening birds. Most of the birds will be shot five to ten feet from the traps; many, dazed and confused, are shot while standing on the ground or on the tops of cages. Each shooter will have the opportunity to shoot at 25 birds, five birds each in five separate rounds.
About a fourth of the birds will be killed outright. Most of the rest will be wounded. Teenagers will race onto the fields and grab most of the wounded birds. They will wring their necks or stuff them still alive into barrels to die from suffocation.
Some birds will be able to fly outside the killing field, only to die a slow and painful death in nearby yards, roofs, or rivers. A few will live.
Now, do it again. And again. And again. All day long. At the "state shoot" in Berks County, about 5,000 birds were launched from 27 boxes on three killing fields.
And, just to make sure that you're a macho macho man, why not stuff a bird onto a plastic fork and parade around the grounds? How about wearing a T-shirt with language so nauseating that even Cable TV would have to blur the message.
By the way, make sure you collect your bets. Illegal gambling, along with excessive drinking, is also a part of this charade that poses as sport. The shooters don't make much, but thousands of dollars will exchange hands.
These are the same psychopaths who probably twirled cats by their tails, and used birthday money to buy BB guns to pluck birds from fences and telephone wires. In their warped minds, they probably think they're Rambo, their shotguns are M-16s, the cages are bunkers, and the cooing birds are agents of Kaos, Maxwell Smart's long-time nemesis.
This is what the NRA is defending as Americans' Second Amendment rights. And why the Pennsylvania legislature has been afraid to pass a bill prohibiting pigeon shoots.
For more than three decades, Pennsylvanians have tried to get this practice banned. For three decades, they have failed. And when it looked as if there was even a remote chance that a slim majority of legislators might support a bill banning pigeon shoots, the House and Senate leadership, most of them from rural Pennsylvania, figured out numerous ways to lock up the bills in committees or keep them from reaching the floor for a vote. In 1994, the House did vote, 99--93, to ban pigeon shoots. But 102 votes were needed.
But now a bill to ban this form of animal cruelty may be headed for a vote in the full legislature. SB626, sponsored by Sen. Patrick Browne (R-Allentown), forbids the "use of live animals or fowl for targets at trap shoots or block shoot" gatherings. It specifically allows fair-chase hunting and protects Second Amendment rights.
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